I dreamed of being an engineer when I was growing up, but algebra and calculus were not my cup of tea, so I pursued a career in politics and public relations.

Over the past few years, hospital organizations have increasingly looked to new technology solutions to improve patient safety. Barcode technology is an especially promising approach in the effort to reduce medical errors.

Not all medication errors are created equal. In efforts to improve patient safety, healthcare systems need to give first priority to averting the medication errors with the greatest potential for harm.

For several months in late 2001, The Johns Hopkins Hospital unknowingly used a defective bronchoscope that resulted in 2 deaths and 400 injuries.

In the past, use of monopolar electrosurgery in open surgical procedures involved the risk of external skin injury due to an alternate return path or compromised return electrode.

The current medical malpractice environment does little if anything to encourage quality care and enhance safety, and tort reform, as espoused by government leaders, insurance company executives, and some physicians,…

Medical education has traditionally relied on training with real patients in actual clinical settings. While hands-on, experiential learning is indispensable, medical educators are increasingly concerned about, and committed to, the safety of patients.

Although it is generally acknowledged that evidence-based medicine (EBM) reflects expert consensus about the standard of care in specific disease processes, implementing guidelines that incorporate EBM meets with a great deal of resistance.

Five years after the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued its report To Err Is Human (1999) with its all-too-familiar statistics of medical errors in hospitals, little has changed.

In the typical hospital environment, sounds of beepers, alarms, machines, telephones, and voices are considered “usual and customary” — normal to those who work there and those who watch the television show “ER.”