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The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF),
in 2003, defined patient safety and healthcare error (NPSF,
2005):
Patient safety is the prevention of healthcare errors,
and the elimination or mitigation of patient injury caused
by healthcare errors.
A healthcare error is an unintended healthcare outcome
caused by a defect in the delivery of care to a patient.
Healthcare errors may be errors of commission (doing the
wrong thing), omission (not doing the right thing), or execution
(doing the right thing incorrectly). Errors may be made
by any member of the healthcare team in any healthcare setting.
There is no universal definition of medical errors. The many
healthcare organizations that are currently focused on healthcare
errors do not all define medical errors in the same way. Sometimes
medical errors are called something other than an "error".
Other terms or words used to identify a medical error include
(Kirker, 2003):
- Adverse event, adverse outcome;
- Medical mishap, unintended consequences;
- Unplanned clinical occurrence; unexpected occurrence;
untoward incident;
- Therapeutic misadventure; bad call;
- Peri-therapeutic accident;
- Sentinel event;
- Iatrogenic complication; iatrogenic injury;
- Hospital acquired complication.
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