Human Error in Intensive Care Units

Each day thousands of patients throughout the United States are warded into intensive care units where they receive various types of medical services. Just as in the performance of any other services in the health care system, the performance of services in intensive care units is subjected to human error. Some of the facts and figures concerned with the occurrence of human error in intensive care units are presented below  

A study of critical incidents that occurred over a 10-year period (1989-1999) in an intensive care unit reported that most of these incidents were the result of staff errors [4]. 

A study of seven intensive care units performed over a 1-year period reported that there were 610 incidents in these units. A detailed analysis of these incidents revealed that 66% of them were due to human factor-related problems and the remaining 34% were due to system-related problems [19]. 

A study of an 11-bed multidisciplinary intensive care unit performed over 1 year reported that 241 errors occurred in the unit during the specified period. A detailed analysis of these human errors revealed 

Various studies concerned with the analysis of human errors in intensive care units have identified the following four basic factors for the occurrence of human error in intensive care units [4]  

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Discuss human error in intensive care units. 

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