Systems Thinking and Patient Safety

Abstract

Patient safety is a prominent theme in health care delivery today. This should come as no surprise, given that "first, do no harm" has been the ethical watchword throughout the history of medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. In recent years, we have become increasingly aware of the magnitude of our failure to successfully live up to this ethical imperative. We have also become increasingly aware of techniques that we might employ to bring reality closer to this ideal of doing no (preventable) harm. The realization of the magnitude of this failure and that there are potential routes to reducing harm has fortunately resulted in both a burgeoning of research in the area of patient safety and willingness to invest in patient safety research. This volume--published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) with support from the U.S. Department of Defense--along with its three companion volumes, is testimony to this blossoming of research and funding.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA434169

Entities

People

  • Paul M. Schyve

Organizations

  • United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Classification
  • Cognition
  • Complex Systems
  • Delivery Of Health Care
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Health Care
  • Health Services
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Information Operations
  • Information Systems
  • Medical Personnel
  • Mental Processes
  • Patient Care
  • Physicians
  • Systems Approach
  • Thinking

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Aviation Safety Risk Assessment.
  • Medical or Health Care Field.
  • Strategic Security Studies