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The Threat Within: Mitigating the Risk of Medical Error

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Global Health Security

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Abstract

Threats to human health reside in the environment – for example, famine, war, pollution, poverty and disease – and in treatment. To secure further improvements in life expectancy, society must address both the threat without, and the threat within. Lives are in jeopardy not only from global diseases such as Ebola, H1N1 and H5N1, but also from medical error. One of the ironies of medicine is that sometimes the cure kills. Despite investing in patient safety initiatives, each year Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) records around 12,000 ‘avoidable deaths’ (a term coined by the NHS itself). In 2013–2014, NHS England received 174,872 written complaints from patients. In 2017, the NHS carried a contingent liability of over £26 billion for claims alleging medical error. In the United States, the three biggest killers are cancer, heart disease and medical error. The World Health Organisation is very concerned about the human and financial costs of medical error. The risk of medical error can be reduced first, by securing a second opinion, secondly, by actioning patient and employee suggestions and thirdly, by engaging in proactive risk management. The chapter elaborates the latter option, specifically, how a tool used to manage operational risk in commercial aviation could be adapted for use in healthcare.

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  1. University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Simon Bennett

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  1. Simon Bennett
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Correspondence to Simon Bennett .

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  1. College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Anthony J. Masys , Ricardo Izurieta  & Miguel Reina Ortiz ,  & 

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Bennett, S. (2020). The Threat Within: Mitigating the Risk of Medical Error. In: Masys, A.J., Izurieta, R., Reina Ortiz, M. (eds) Global Health Security. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23491-1_3

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