ABSTRACT
Human error is an important factor in many different medical areas that, directly or indirectly, inuences patient safety. These areas include anesthesia, emergency medicine, operating rooms, intensive care units, medical technology use, laboratory testing, radiotherapy, image interpretation, and surgical pathology. For example, over 90% of the adverse events that occur in emergency departments are considered preventable [1-3], and a study of critical incident reports in an intensive care unit over a 10-year period (19891999) reported that most of the incidents were the result of staff errors [4].
