Patient safety: What does it mean in the United States?

Abstract

Mistakes are at the very base of human thoughts, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack of being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices are made as frequently as the right ones. We get along in life this way. We are built to make mistakes, coded for error. The capacity to leap across mountains of information and land lightly on the wrong side represents the highest of human endowments (Thomas, 1974). © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.