Patient Safety: What Does It All Mean?

B Lynn Johnston,John M Conly

doi:10.1155/2004/789840

Abstract

Patient Safety: What Does It All Mean?

Highlights

From a historical perspective, Elihu Schimmel in 1964 [5] wrote that recent medical progress has brought dramatic advances in methods of diagnosis and treatment but, with each new advance, reports of adverse reactions have soon followed
Thirty-six years later, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the United States published To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System [6]
In the first two of these studies, investigators retrospectively estimated the incidence and nature of adverse events in patients hospitalized in 51 hospitals in New York State in 1984 [7,8]

Summary

Introduction

Elihu Schimmel in 1964 [5] wrote that recent medical progress has brought dramatic advances in methods of diagnosis and treatment but, with each new advance, reports of adverse reactions have soon followed. These numbers were extrapolated from the results of three studies [7,8,9] examining the incidence of adverse events in hospitalized patients and have been vigorously debated.

Results

Conclusion