The Era of Patient Safety: Implications for Nursing Informatics Curricula

Abstract

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that between 44,000 and 94,000 Americans die in hospitals each year due to medical error at a cost of over $29 billion. 1 Only some of the “active” errors occur at the level of the frontline worker. Potentially more dangerous are the “latent” errors embedded in poorly designed, installed, or maintained systems; or in ineffective organization structure. 2 Nursing informatics has a crucial role to play in reducing latent errors because of its focus, in graduate curricula, on the design, implementation, and evaluation of clinical information systems.