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	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: In their article on the relatively limited changes that have followed the 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report To Err Is Human, Drs Leape and Berwick¹ correctly argue that complexity, professional fragmentation, individualism, and hierarchical authority structures, along with vague accountability and lack of hospital or health plan leadership, create barriers to team work and individual accountability, prerequisites for a culture of safety in medicine. We wish to draw attention to the critical role that specialty societies can play in advancing patient safety.

Specialty societies are ideally positioned to explore how patient safety concepts play out in their individual fields and engage their members in addressing the problem of medical errors. Although many aspects of patient safety are common across diseases, errors and adverse events have important specialty-specific dimensions. For example, in clinical oncology, there may be issues related to errors around the severity, pain, and uncertainty . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Antonella Surbone, MD, PhD
asurbone@esoncology.org
European School of Oncology
Milan, Italy

Thomas H. Gallagher, MD
Medicine and Medical History and Ethics
University of Washington
Seattle

Katherine Russell Rich
New York City

Michael Rowe, PhD
Department of Psychiatry
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, Conn

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