BACKGROUND Preventable medical harm is a leading cause of death in the United States. Incident reporting systems have been identified as the primary method to capture medical error and harm. Incidents are rarely reported, particularly among physician trainees. METHODS We conducted a single-center, quasi-experimental study to examine the effect of education on the importance of and how to file...

BACKGROUND Inappropriate use of prescribing pharmaceuticals, particularly injections, not only affects the quality of medical care, but also leads to an increase in medical expenses. Publicly reporting performance data of medical care is becoming a common health policy tool adopted to supervise medical quality. To our knowledge, few studies about public reporting applied to medicine use have be...

From the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. HEN the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued To Err Is Human,1 the recommendation to expand reporting of serious adverse events and medical errors, particularly mandatory reporting, received the most attention and sparked controversy.2 The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association raised strong objections, claiming that ma...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Poor device design that fails to adequately account for user needs, cognition, and behavior is often responsible for use errors resulting in adverse events. This poor device design is also often latent, and could be responsible for "No Fault Found" (NFF) reporting, in which medical devices sent for repair by clinical users are found to be operating as intended. Unresolved...

The quality of reporting of cohort studies published in the most prestigious scientific medical journals was investigated to indicate to what extent the items in the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist are addressed. Six top scientific medical journals with high impact factor were selected including New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of ...

Background: Due to their inherent characteristics, neonates hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care units are more often exposed to medication errors and its adverse effects. The aim of this study is to determine the reasons for failure to report Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) experienced by nurses employed at these units in educational and treatment centers affiliated to the Iran University o...

Healthcare has been slow in using human factors principles to reduce medical errors. The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) recognizes that a lack of attention to human factors during product development may lead to errors that have the potential for patient injury, or even death. In response to the need for reducing medication errors, the National Coordinating Council for Medica...

Medical ethics is a realm where four important subjects of philosophy, medicine, theology and law are covered. Physicians and philosophers cooperation in this area will have great efficiency in the respective ethical rules formation. In addition to respect the autonomy of the patient, physician's obligation is to ensure that the medical intervention has benefit for the patient and the harm is m...