Promoting Patient Safety by Preventing Medical Error
- Lucian L. Leape, MD;
- David D. Woods, PhD;
- Martin J. Hatlie, JD;
- Kenneth W. Kizer, MD, MPH;
- Steven A. Schroeder, MD;
- George D. Lundberg, MD
- From the School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, Mass (Dr Leape); Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus (Dr Woods); National Patient Safety Foundation, American Medical Association, Chicago, Ill (Mr Hatlie); US Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC (Dr Kizer); and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, NJ (Dr Schroeder). Dr Lundberg is Editor, JAMA.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- joint commission on accreditation of healthcare organizations
- medication errors
- patients
- safety
- united states department of veterans affairs
In 1995, a series of highly publicized medical incidents with serious adverse patient consequences awakened public and professional interest in safety in health care. In response to this increased awareness and recognizing that health care could learn much about safety from other industries, in October 1996, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Medical Association (AMA), and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) joined with the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences to convene the first multidisciplinary conference on errors in health care.
Since then a number of initiatives in patient safety have been undertaken at both the state and national level, and many hospitals have intensified their efforts at preventing patient injuries, particularly those due to medication errors. Reports of serious overdoses of chemotherapy, for example, led to the development of protocols and preprinted orders to reduce calculation errors. Following reports of deaths from …
