Errors in Reporting

Abstract

Given that the report is a “professional” document and bears the associated responsibilities (as discussed in the chapter “Medical-Legal Aspects”), all of the radiologist’s errors appear in it, either directly or indirectly. It is not easy to distinguish and classify the mistakes made when a report is prepared because, in most cases, the errors are complex and attributable to more than one cause and because many errors depend on the individual radiologist’s professional, behavioral, and psychological traits. In fact, assuming that “anyone can make a mistake”, some radiologists will make more mistakes than others because they are more predisposed to doing so (only those who are not paying attention make mistakes, as said in the “Introduction”), for which reason there are “universal” errors and “individual” errors: the first are committed by all radiologists; the second are not. These mistakes vary greatly (it suffices to think of those made due to a lack of respect for the logical sequence), but classifying them in this way could be too arbitrary. So, we have nothing more to say in that regard.