Human Reliability And Error In Medical System

Book excerpt: Human reliability and error have become a very important issue in health care, owing to the vast number of associated deaths each year. For example, according to the findings of the Institute of Medicine in 1999, around 100000 Americans die each year because of human error. This makes human error in health care the eighth leading cause of deaths in the US. Moreover, the total annual national cost of the medical errors is estimated at between $17 billion and $37.6 billion.There are very few books on this subject, and none of them covers it at a significant depth. The need for a book presenting the basics of human reliability, human factors and comprehensive information on error in medical systems is essential. This book meets that need.