ABSTRACT
Prevention of medical injury requires finding ways to prevent errors as well as developing mechanisms to protect patients from injuries when errors inevitably occur. Hospital medical records were reviewed by trained nurse-abstractors who searched for one of 18 screening criteria that indicated an injury was possible. Each medical record that met a screening criterion was then independently reviewed by two physicians who were certified in either internal medicine or general surgery. The study records of all adverse events were reviewed, and each Adverse Event (AE) was classified as preventable, unpreventable, or potentially preventable. The most common types of preventable errors were errors in diagnosis (17%), technical errors (44%), errors in the use of a drug (10%), and failures to prevent injury (12%). Patients with a preventable AE were more likely to suffer prolonged disability or death (27%) than those with nonpreventable AEs (19%).
