It’s been 10 years since the publication of the pathbreaking Institute of Medicine report, “To Err is Human,” which for the first time focused policy attention on medical errors. The Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative has been running a two-week special series of posts to mark the occasion, and they very kindly asked me to contribute.
Here’s a link to my guest-post, “Hospital Error Rates — Still a Long Way To Go,” looking at a recent paper and editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association that reported very discouraging results in rates of infections in ICUs worldwide. (And, umm, yes, that is what I look like.)
While you’re there, please take a look also at another guest post by my good friend Nancy Shute, former staff writer and now blogger for US News & World Report, who discusses the difficulty of speaking up as a patient, based on her own experience in the hospital last summer. It’s very worth a read.