Manslaughter and preventable harm

Emotional harm from disrespect: the neglected preventable harm.

To cite: Sokol-Hessner L, Folcarelli PH, Sands KEF. BMJ Qual Saf 2015;24:550–553. INTRODUCTION Consider these actual patient experiences: ▸ A patient is admitted to the hospital for a bowel obstruction from a known malignancy. She calls her cancer specialist about this complication, but he is unavailable. A covering provider reading from her file says ‘your cancer is untreatable’. This is the f...

Preventable hospital admissions related to medication (HARM): cost analysis of the HARM study.

OBJECTIVE Adverse drug events (ADEs) can cause serious harm to patients and can lead to hospitalization or even death. ADEs are a burden not only to patients and their relatives, but also to society and have the potential to involve high costs. To provide more information on the economic burden of preventable adverse drug events of outpatients, we performed a cost study on the data collected in...

Measuring preventable harm: helping science keep pace with policy.

Mistakes, misguided moments, and manslaughter.

Aiming for zero preventable deaths: using death review to improve care and reduce harm.

In 2005, our organization set a goal of zero preventable deaths by 2010--notionally a sound goal but extremely challenging to measure, monitor and evaluate. The development of an interdisciplinary Death and Adverse Event Review process has provided a measure and framework for action to decrease adverse events (AEs) that cause harm. Death and Adverse Event Review is a formal process in which tra...