Medical harm

Marijuana, despite all the scare stories, is not a medically harmful substance, obviously. Nor is it a psychological menace, either. But as one last note, it should be said that we could fill... 

When medicine could achieve relatively little, it was hardly surprising that medical harm was far from people s minds, though Thomas does describe some fairly hair-raising treatments for delirium tremens involving massive doses of paraldehyde. 

Shaipe, V.A. and Faden, A.I. (1998) Medical Harm. Historical, Conceptual and Ethical Dimensions of Iatrogenic Illness, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 

Cooper and Leape are not the only authors to understand the importance of human factors and psychology to medical harm and medical error at an early stage. For instance, Marilyn Bogner s 1994 book Human error in medicine contained many insightful and important chapters by David Woods, Richard Cook, NevUle Moray and others James Reason articulated his theory of accidents and discussed its apphcation in medicine in Medical Accidents (Vincent, Ennis and Audley, 1993). Cooper and Leape were, however, particularly important influences and they Ulustrate the more general point that some of the defining characteristics of patient safety are its acceptance of the importance of psychology and the lessons to be learnt from other safety critical industries. 

The nature of the book, xi Inspiration, acknowledgements and thanks, xiii SECTION ONE The Evolution of Patient Safety Chapter 1 Medical harm a brief history, 3 Chapter 2 The emergence of patient safety, 14 Chapter 3 Integrating safety and quality, 31 SECTION TWO The Hazards of Healthcare Chapter 4 The nature and scale of error and harm, 49 Chapter 5 Reporting and learning systems, 75 Chapter 6 Measuring safety, 96... 

The investment in the notion of error, reflected in the medical literature, set up the framework for government action. When To Err Is Human was released, there were four major federal initiatives to reduce medical harm. These intensified immediately after the report s publication. The federal government s largest single investment to address medical injiuy is the more than 50 million appropri-... 

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