To prevent medical errors, we have to understand how they occur and invest in programs to prevent them. Acknowledging health care delivery is a complex process, so the Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care is establishing a Quality Improvement and Patient Safety feature. The objective is to contribute to building a collective knowledge base in patient safety and quality improvement and share what we are learning about error prevention, adverse events, and quality processes.
. . . we must recognize medical errors are a result of faulty systems, not people.”
Source: Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care, December 7, 2022. Link. Two critical components of safe care delivery systems are error documentation and data collection which when deployed help cultures where errors are seen as opportunities to improve, rather than individual failures.