Error reduction in medicine

According to a study funded by the Nuffield Trust, over 10% of patients admitted to UK hospitals are harmed as a result of the treatment they receive, andhalf of these ‘adverse events’ are preventable. Publications by other bodies, such as the 2000 Department of Health report An organisation with a memory, highlight major patient safety problems with the UK NHS.

As a result, increasing attention has been paid to patient safety in the health care sector over the past five years.

Models of accident investigation and analysis developed in other industries seem to have transferred reasonably well to healthcare, but we do not yet know whether error reduction methods developed in highly proceduralised industries will transfer to healthcare equally effectively. This research paper explores error reduction methods in other sectors such as the aerospace and nuclear industries, in order to assess their potential usefulness in health care.

The authors then attempt to to show how a specific technique, ‘Barrier analysis’, could be applied in a healthcare environment, specifically to the issue of medication practice in the Accident and Emergency environment.