Improving patient safety: moving beyond the "hype" of medical errors

Abstract

Have resulted in some laudable initiatives, including creation of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute. We are nonetheless concerned that health care administrators, patient safety ad- vocates and even researchers believe that solutions to most safety problems already exist, and that the only problem is educating health care providers to use them. We disagree. For example, the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, a US-based nonprofit organization, launched the "100K Lives" campaign, in which it recommends several interventions to tackle 6 "safety" problems. 3,4 Although some of the recom- mended interventions (e.g., ASA therapy to reduce mortality after myocardial infarction) are supported by high levels of evidence, several are not. For an example of the latter, as a means to minimize preventable deaths the campaign suggests implementing a rapid-response team of clinicians to bring critical expertise quickly to the bedside of patients with dan- gerously abnormal vital signs. In theory, such an intervention could be effective, and some observational data do support its use;