ABSTRACT
Error in medicine or more generally error in health care strikes fear in the hearts and minds of every individual. That concern, which normally lies fallow, was whipped into a frenzy of public consternation and outrage by the media’s repeated highlighting the revelation in the report on med ical error by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences that 44,000 to 98,000 people die annually because of medical error (Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 1999). That outrage was directed primarily at physicians and nurses because they commit the erroneous acts that result in adverse outcomes. The adverse outcome that received the most attention in the IOM report was death, but in common parlance, adverse outcomes include injuries and prolongation of treatment of the pre senting health problem or the onset of a new health problem that requires extended treatmentproblems related to the care provided rather than the condition of the patient.
