Patient Safety Ethics

Book excerpt: Developing best practices and ethical systems to protect and enhance patient safety. Human errors occur all too frequently in medical practice settings. One sobering recent report claimed that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Hoping to reverse this disturbing trend but wondering why it is that things usually go well despite errors, John D. Banja's Patient Safety Ethics lays out a model that advocates vigilance, mindfulness, compliance, and humility as core ethical principles of patient safety. Arguing that the safe provision of healthcare is one of the most fundamental moral obligations of clinicians, Banja surveys the research literature on harm-causing medical errors to explore the ethical foundations of patient safety and to reduce the severity and frequency of medical error. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on quality improvement, risk management, and medical decision making, Banja also relies on a novel source of information to illustrate patient safety ethics: medical malpractice suits. Providing professional perspective with insights from prominent patient safety experts, Patient Safety Ethics identifies hazard pitfalls and suggests concrete ways for clinicians and regulators to improve patient safety through an ethically cultivated program of "hazard awareness."