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Error Reduction, Patient Safety and Institutional Ethics Committees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Mark E. Meaney
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Extract

Institutional ethics committees remain largely absent from the literature on error reduction and patient safety. This paper attempts to fill the gap. Healthcare professionals are on the front lines in the defense against medical error, but the changes that are needed to reduce medical errors and enhance patient safety are cultural and systemic in nature. As noted in the Hastings Centers recent report, Promoting Patient Safety, the occurrence of medical error involves a complex web of multiple factors. Human misstep is certainly one such factor, but not the only one. In this paper, I build on the Hasting Centers report on patient safety (HCR) in arguing that institutional ethics committees ought to play an integral role in the transformation of a culture of blame to a culture of safety in healthcare delivery.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Summer 2004 , pp. 358 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2004

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