The intersection of patient safety and nursing research.

The individual and collective discussions of the patient safety issue in the United States have mounted from a low roar to a deafening din in the past 10 years. In this chapter the authors (1) discuss the context of patient safety over the past decade and the federal response to the problem, (2) briefly present Reason's theory of human error, which frames much of the safety research, and (3) provide a glossary of terms.