Another look at medical error

Medical error continues to be a topic of discussion. Blaming the physician or nurse for error is too simplistic and may serve to blur larger system problems from being identified and addressed. This article considers recent history of assignment of errors from a quality assurance perspective, multiple paths which result in error, reviewing the 1999 Institute of Medicine report and looking beyond the numbers to issues that can only be assigned to systems. J. Surg. Oncol. 2004;88:122–129. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.