To err is human--the fallible physician.

A 1999 report published by the Institute of Medicine shocked our nation's citizens and health care providers. This report, entitled To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, suggested that as many as 98,000 people die each year in the United States as a result of medical errors, making medical errors the 8th-leading cause of death. By comparison, Americans are much less likely to die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS. More Americans die annually from medication errors alone than from workplace injuries. Not all errors are fatal ones, of course. An error may cause only temporary problems or disability, or may have no consequence at all. Errors may be due to mistakes made by individual health care providers, or may be due to faulty or inefficient processes in organizations and other health care delivery systems. This editorial will focus on the inevitability of physician fallibility, two causes of individual provider errors, and suggestions for strategies that should be considered by health care providers in an attempt to reduce errors. Next month we will look at the efforts made by hospitals in order to improve patient safety, and how these efforts impact physician practice.