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Why the need to reduce medical errors is not obvious
Author(s) -
Buetow Stephen
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2004.00497.x
Subject(s) - contest , assertion , meaning (existential) , mandate , quality (philosophy) , population , medical practice , medicine , psychology , computer science , epistemology , medical education , law , political science , philosophy , environmental health , psychotherapist , programming language
According to Leape & Berwick (2000) the need to reduce medical errors is ‘obvious and the mandate is clear’. My article questions this assertion. I go beyond the unknown incidence of medical errors in a general medical population to suggest that the meaning of medical errors is itself equivocal. I contest the assumption that the ‘wrongness’ of medical errors is always problematic, arguing instead for a distinction between desirable errors and undesirable errors. This distinction takes into account the consequences of errors, and why they may occur. Reasons include the inappropriateness of two cultural contexts – evidence‐based medicine and continuous quality improvement – within which patient safety standards can be constructed and hence, medical errors can be defined.