title: Another look at medical error.
abstract: Medical error continues to be a topic of discussion. Blaming the physician or nurse for error is too simplistic and may serve to blur larger system problems from being identified and addressed. This article considers recent history of assignment of errors from a quality assurance perspective, multiple paths which result in error, reviewing the 1999 Institute of Medicine report and looking beyond the numbers to issues that can only be assigned to systems.
authors.affiliation: Quality Services, Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA. skip.deskin@pardeehospital.org
authors.forename: William C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Deskin
authors.forename: Robert E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Hoye
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015969:National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, U.S., Health and Medicine Division / Q000458:organization & administration; D010820:Physicians; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States