Harris Mary Helen
S D J Med. 2004 Jan;57(1):9-11.
A 1999 report published by the Institute of Medicine shocked our nation's citizens and health care providers. This report, entitled To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, suggested that as many as 98,000 people die each year in the United States as a result of medical errors, making medical errors the 8th-leading cause of death. By comparison, Americans are much less likely to die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. More Americans die annually from medication errors alone than from workplace injuries. Not all errors are fatal ones, of course. An error may cause only temporary problems or disability, or may have no consequence at all. Errors may be due to mistakes made by individual health care providers, or may be due to faulty or inefficient processes in organizations and other health care delivery systems. This editorial will focus on the inevitability of physician fallibility, two causes of individual provider errors, and suggestions for strategies that should be considered by health care providers in an attempt to reduce errors. Next month we will look at the efforts made by hospitals in order to improve patient safety, and how these efforts impact physician practice.
医学研究所1999年发布的一份报告震惊了美国公民和医疗服务提供者。这份题为《人皆会犯错：构建更安全的医疗体系》的报告指出，在美国，每年多达9.8万人死于医疗失误，这使得医疗失误成为第八大死因。相比之下，美国人死于机动车事故、乳腺癌或艾滋病的可能性要小得多。仅药物治疗失误每年导致死亡的美国人就比工作场所受伤导致死亡的美国人多。当然，并非所有失误都是致命的。一个失误可能只造成暂时的问题或残疾，或者可能根本没有后果。失误可能是由于个体医疗服务提供者犯的错误，也可能是由于组织和其他医疗服务提供系统中的流程有缺陷或效率低下。这篇社论将聚焦于医生易犯错的必然性、个体医疗服务提供者失误的两个原因，以及医疗服务提供者为减少失误应考虑的策略建议。下个月我们将探讨医院为提高患者安全所做的努力，以及这些努力如何影响医生的执业。
