Whois & Analysis for ihi.org

Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of medical error that often leads to adverse effects.

The frequency and magnitude of avoidable adverse events experienced by patients was not well known until the 1990s, when multiple countries reported staggering numbers of patients harmed and killed by medical errors.

Recognizing that healthcare errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world, the World Health Organization calls patient safety an endemic concern.

Indeed, patient safety has emerged as a distinct healthcare discipline supported by an immature yet developing scientific framework.

There is a significant transdisciplinary body of theoretical and research literature that informs the science of patient safety.

The resulting patient safety knowledge continually informs improvement efforts such as: applying lessons learned from business and industry, adopting innovative technologies, educating providers and consumers, enhancing error reporting systems, and developing new economic incentives.

Health care or healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health via the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in human beings.

Healthcare is delivered by health professionals (providers or practitioners) in allied health professions, chiropractic, physicians, physician associates, dentistry, midwifery, nursing, medicine, optometry, pharmacy, psychology, and other health professions.

It includes the work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health.

, formerly known as, is a Japanese company which produces ships, aircraft engines, turbochargers for automobiles, industrial machines, power station boilers and other facilities, suspension bridges and other transport-related machinery.

A patient safety organization (PSO) is a group, institution or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors.

In the 1990s, reports in several countries revealed a staggering number of patient injuries and deaths each year due to avoidable adverse health care events.

In the United States, the Institute of Medicine report (1999) called for a broad national effort to include the establishment of patient safety centers, expanded reporting of adverse events and development of safety programs in health care organizations.

The organizations that developed ranged from governmental to private, and some founded by industry, professional or consumer groups.

Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection and analysis, reporting, education, funding and advocacy.

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.