Medical Error and Harm

Recent debate over healthcare and its spiraling costs has brought medical error into the spotlight as an indicator of everything that is ineffective, inhumane, and wasteful about modern medicine. But while the tendency is to blame it all on human error, it is a much more complex problem that involves overburdened systems, constantly changing techno

Putting medical error and harm in context. Reducing errors and harm in medicine; beyond the oops! factor. The valued legacy. Error and harm across general human experience in the non-medical domains. Welcome to lathology. Error and harm in the health sciences. Defining and classifying human error and its consequences in clinical and community settings. Describing medical error and harm. Their occurrence and nature in clinical and community settings. Analyzing medical error and harm. Search for their causes and consequences. Flaws in operator's reasoning and decision making before action. Prevention, intervention and control of medical error and harm. Clinical epidemiological considerations of actions and their evaluation. Taking medical error and harm to court. Contributions of physicians and expectations of physicians in tort litigation and legal decision-making. Conclusions. A Brief and (hopefully) Harmonized Glossary. Appendices.