Human Error in Emergency Medicine

Just like any other area of the health care system, emergency departments are subject to human error. There are about 100 million emergency department patient visits in the United States each year [13]. Thus, even a very small percentage of human error occurrence in this area can translate into a considerable number of associated adverse events. Some of the facts and figures that directly or indirectly support the occurrence of human errors in emergency departments are as follows  

Over 90% of the adverse events in emergency departments are preventable [1,3]. 

To prevent or minimize human error occurrences in emergency medicine, it is essential to accurately assess all possible risks or predictor factors. 

Therefore, from the public health perspective, appropriate epidemiological approaches should be used to identify the causes of emergency medicine-related errors and their resulting adverse events or consequences [13,16,17]. Also, questions such as those presented below can be useful in reducing the occurrence of human errors in the area of emergency medicine [13]  

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Are there any ideal length of shifts and change-of-shift methods to reduce human errors in emergency medicine ... 

Write an essay on human error in emergency medicine. 

The same type of progress that has been realized in the aviation industry, in terms of managing threats to safety and minimizing the consequences of human error, is edging into health care, notably in areas (such as surgery, emergency medicine, delivery suites, and intensive care units) where frequent crises make teamwork essential. 

Evidence based medicine then provides the foundation of good practice but does not directly address the safety issue, which is why care known to be effective is not delivered to the patient. From our point of view, the most important point is that an evaluation of a clinical practice has led to questions of a psychological nature and towards core patient safety issues of error and human behaviour. These themes emerge more strongly in the next section, which addresses some criticisms of the report s approach to patient safety. 

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