A nation watched in horror as 17-year-old Jessica Santillian died needlessly after a heart-lung transplant in 2003. She had been given organs with the wrong blood type. That error killed her. It is just one among tens of thousands of less publicized errors that occur in U.S. hospitals each year. Author Karin Berntsen, a veteran of the hospital and health care industry, takes us through the headlines, and the events never publicized, into hospital wards and surgical rooms to see how errors are made causing disability or death. She gives graphic examples of actual events that illustrate the problems cited in a federal Institute of Medicine report showing medical errors in the hospital cause 44,000 to 98,000 deaths each year. Those errors include medication mistakes, wrong site or side surgery, and botched transfusions. Berntsen explains why these are not just human errors with one or two people responsible; they are systems failures that require a major culture change to remedy. And that change, she argues, may not come without action by the very people the medical system is designed to help: patients. She offers clear actions consumers can take to assure they are not on the receiving end of a medical error. The book details over 200 tips for improving patient safety. U.S. hospitals have countless stories of miraculous healing and recovery; the greatest technology, most advanced medicines, and best research in the world. On the other hand, we have a system where medical errors bring more than 120 fatalities each day across the country in hospitals. An airline crash causing that many deaths daily would paralyze that industry. But because the deaths and harm are diluted across and deep within the silence of hospitals, it is easier to be complacent. There is, says Berntsen, an urgent need to pause and take inventory, a need for clinicians and consumers to come together as partners for change.

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published its landmark report, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, in which it stated that nearly 98,000 people die needlessly every year due to preventable medical mistakes. In 2009, the Consumers Union published a report, To Err Is HumanTo Delay Is Deadly, stating that we are no better off today than we were ten years ago and that a million lives have been lost and billions of dollars wasted due to medical mistakes. Enter Dr. Mary Sue McAslan, pharmacist and medication safety expert. With over thirty years experience, she provides clever, easy-to-follow safety tips for the average healthcare consumer. These simple tips will prevent serious medication errors from happening at the hospital, the doctors office, the pharmacy, and at home.

In 1996 the Institute of Medicine launched the Quality Chasm Series, a series of reports focused on assessing and improving the nation's quality of health care. Preventing Medication Errors is the newest volume in the series. Responding to the key messages in earlier volumes of the seriesâ€"To Err Is Human (2000), Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), and Patient Safety (2004)â€"this book sets forth an agenda for improving the safety of medication use. It begins by providing an overview of the system for drug development, regulation, distribution, and use. Preventing Medication Errors also examines the peer-reviewed literature on the incidence and the cost of medication errors and the effectiveness of error prevention strategies. Presenting data that will foster the reduction of medication errors, the book provides action agendas detailing the measures needed to improve the safety of medication use in both the short- and long-term. Patients, primary health care providers, health care organizations, purchasers of group health care, legislators, and those affiliated with providing medications and medication- related products and services will benefit from this guide to reducing medication errors.

Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.

There are plenty of books on clinical errors, some written for doctors and others for lawyers. This book is for patients. It describes the principles of medicine and then explains what people can expect their general practitioner to do by way of diagnosis and treatment. It removes some of the mystery surrounding medical practice and explains how accidents can occur. This is almost a small medical textbook – but one that cuts through the technicalities to help people understand what has happened. The examples of what can go wrong in medical practice are actual UK general practitioner cases where lawyers requested a medical opinion in cases of alleged negligence. The examples give a guide to patients who are considering a complaint about a medical practitioner. They may also provide an explanation for patients and relatives to show that even if things have turned out badly the doctor may still have done all that was possible.