After several decades during which it seemed that
many healthcare professionals did not admit the
occurrence of medical errors nor their adverse impact
on healthcare, the problem is receiving growing
attention from the scientific community (1). This perception
is confirmed by the increasing number of
publications on this topic in the scientific literature.
Over 5500 patient safety publications and research
awards were published during the 10-year period
from 1995 to 2004, a number that has exponentially
grown since the release of the Institute of Medicine
(IOM) report ‘‘To err is human: building a safer health
system’’ in 1999 (2). Despite such reaffirmed emphasis,
a number of studies still demonstrate unacceptably
high rates of medical injuries and preventable
deaths (3, 4). Although these incidents are commonly
attributed to the fallibility of medical staff, in reality
most of them result from poor system design, whereby
the designers simply expect too much of the users.
In fact, each activity in a healthcare system can hardly
be thought of as individuals working in isolation,
since healthcare employees mostly work as parts of
teams within a well-defined organizational context.
Ignoring this aspect could lead to missing critical vulnerabilities
and blaming single individuals rather than
identifying pitfalls in the structural design of the system.
Regardless of the real cause, a medical error
may produce a wide series of adverse consequences
for patient health, up to death, and is considered a
‘‘near miss’’ when there is potential for damage. Reliable
investigations of adverse events based on
reviews of medical notes attest that up to 2% of
patients may be harmed as a result of medical errors
(1), adding up to $9.3 billion in hospital charges in the
US alone (5) and perpetuating a tolerance for error
rates higher than or equal to many other non-medical
activities (6). There is a widespread perception that
most medical errors arise from inappropriate or
delayed clinical management. Nevertheless, mistakes
associated with diagnosis, either delayed or missed,
may still occur with frequency, varying from 26% to
78% of medical errors identified in primary care.
Moreover, they are the most likely to result in major
harm to the patient or precipitate hospital admission
and are less preventable overall (7).