Ball M J, Douglas J V
Healthlink, Inc., Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Methods Inf Med. 2002;41(4):271-6.
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has focused attention on patient safety in the United States. Other countries share these concerns.
Governmental agencies and professional organizations are redefining approaches to safety, calling upon the use of information and communication technology as an enabler and expanding the range of evidence admissible in documenting success.
Efforts to understand medical errors have used retrospective chart review, incident reporting, and computerized surveillance; the result is an evolving picture of the number, nature, and cause of errors. Approaches used to prevent errors include computerized physician order entry, decision support tools, computerized monitoring, and evidence-based practice; varying levels of evidence document their success.
Technology offers challenging capabilities, not simple solutions. New evidence and new tools demand new approaches and attention to human factors.
美国医学研究所（IOM）已将注意力集中在美国的患者安全问题上。其他国家也有同样的担忧。
政府机构和专业组织正在重新定义安全方法，呼吁使用信息和通信技术作为推动因素，并扩大记录成功案例时可接受的证据范围。
为了解医疗差错所做的努力采用了回顾性病历审查、事件报告和计算机化监测；结果是一幅关于差错数量、性质和原因的不断演变的图景。用于预防差错的方法包括计算机化医嘱录入、决策支持工具、计算机化监测和循证实践；不同程度的证据证明了它们的成功。
技术提供了具有挑战性的能力，而非简单的解决方案。新的证据和新的工具需要新的方法以及对人为因素的关注。
