Medical Error and Harm

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Recent debates over healthcare costs have highlighted medical error as a key indicator of inefficiencies in modern medicine. While often attributed to human error, the issue is more complex, involving overburdened systems, evolving technology, increasing specialization, and chronic funding shortfalls exacerbated by resource-wasting inefficiencies. This work by Milos Jenicek, a physician and expert in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, offers a comprehensive overview of medical error and harm. It includes a brief history of errors across various fields, methodologies for studying and managing them, and semantic classifications of challenges in medical error and harm. The book explores investigative approaches to address these challenges, detailing when and how to conduct studies on errors, including risk assessments in diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. It outlines strategies for mitigating errors within community medicine and public health and examines the role of physicians in tort law and litigation. Furthermore, it addresses whether managing errors is a learned skill and critiques the medical community's shortcomings in teaching critical thinking skills related to medical error. Understanding and correcting these issues is a crucial responsibility for health professionals, which this book aims to facilitate.