Understanding Patient Safety Quotes

“James Reason reminds us, “Errors are largely unintentional. It is very difficult for management to control what people did not intend to do in the first place.”
― Robert Wachter, Understanding Patient Safety

“The modern patient safety movement replaces “the blame and shame game” with an approach known as systems thinking. This paradigm acknowledges the human condition—namely, that humans err—and concludes that safety depends on creating systems that anticipate errors and either prevent or catch them before they cause harm. Such an approach has been the cornerstone of safety improvements in other high-risk industries but has been ignored in medicine until the past decade.”
― Robert Wachter, Understanding Patient Safety

“McGlynn EA, Asch SM, Adams J, et al. The quality of health care delivered to adults in the United States.”
― Robert Wachter, Understanding Patient Safety

“Mistakes, on the other hand, result from incorrect choices. Rather than blundering into them while we are distracted, we usually make mistakes because of insufficient knowledge, lack of experience or training, inadequate information (or inability to interpret available information properly), or applying the wrong set of rules or algorithms to a decision”
― Robert Wachter, Understanding Patient Safety