The Problem Of Fluid Viscosity Management: An Interdisciplinary Approach To A Community Based Problem Emphazing Undergraduate Engineering Research

Medical errors are on-going concerns due to their relationship with patient safety. To heighten patient safety and medical errors concerns in the American health care community, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published the report on entitled "To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System." This report discusses two types of preventable events: serious events and less serious events. The type of errors addressed by this research group, inadequately prepared thickened liquids, is consider less serious events. Thus, the researchers sought out errorreduction strategies in terms of fluid preparation errors related to patients on swallowing disorders or dysphagia diets.