Editing Error (section)

==Medicine==
A [[medical error]] is a preventable adverse effect of care ("iatrogenesis"), whether or not it is evident or harmful to the patient. This might include an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis or treatment of a disease, injury, syndrome, behavior, infection, or other ailment.

The word ''error'' in medicine is used as a label for nearly all of the clinical incidents that harm patients. Medical errors are often described as [[human error]]s in healthcare.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Zhang J |author2=Pate, VL |author3=Johnson TR |year=2008 |title=Medical error: Is the solution medical or cognitive? |journal=Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association |volume=6 |issue=Supp1 |pages=75–77 |doi=10.1197/jamia.M1232|pmid=12386188 |pmc=419424 }}</ref> Whether the label is a medical error or human error, one definition used in medicine says that it occurs when a [[health care|healthcare]] provider chooses an inappropriate method of care, improperly executes an appropriate method of care, or reads the wrong [[CT scan]]. It has been said that the definition should be the subject of more debate. For instance, studies of hand hygiene compliance of physicians in an ICU show that compliance varied from 19% to 85%.<ref name="negligence">{{cite journal |title=Hand washing and physicians: how to get them together |vauthors=Salemi C, Canola MT, Eck EK |date=January 2002 |pmid=11868890 |doi=10.1086/501965 |volume=23 |issue=1 |journal=Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol |pages=32–5|s2cid=18663388 }}</ref>{{update after|2016|6|22}} The deaths that result from infections caught as a result of treatment providers improperly executing an appropriate method of care by not complying with known safety standards for hand hygiene are difficult to regard as innocent accidents or mistakes.

There are many types of medical error, from minor to major,<ref name="mederror">{{cite journal |last1=Hofer |first1=TP |last2=Kerr |first2=EA |last3=Hayward |first3=RA |title=What is an error? |journal=Effective Clinical Practice |date=2000 |volume=3 |issue=6 |pages=261–9 |pmid=11151522 |url=http://www.acponline.org/journals/ecp/novdec00/hofer.htm |access-date=June 11, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928004341/http://www.acponline.org/journals/ecp/novdec00/hofer.htm |archive-date=September 28, 2007 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and causality is often poorly determined.<ref name="mederror2">{{cite journal |doi=10.1001/jama.286.4.415 |title=Estimating Hospital Deaths Due to Medical Errors: Preventability Is in the Eye of the Reviewer |last1=Hayward |first1=Rodney A. |last2=Hofer |first2=Timothy P. |date=July 25, 2001 |journal=JAMA |volume=286 |issue=4 |pages=415–20 |pmid=11466119}}</ref>{{update after|2016|6|22}}

There are many taxonomies for classifying medical errors.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kopec |first1=D. |last2=Tamang |first2=S. |last3=Levy |first3=K. |last4=Eckhardt |first4=R. |last5=Shagas |first5=G. |title=The state of the art in the reduction of medical errors |journal=Studies in Health Technology and Informatics |date=2006 |volume=121 |pages=126–37 |pmid=17095810}}</ref>