
Patients’ safety is one of the key aspects of quality of health care systems. Medical errors and risks to patient’s safety have always threatened the patient’s health. American Institute of Medicine defines medical errors and unwanted events as negligence in observing the programmed measures and/or following a wrong method to reach a specific purpose. Errors might take place during diagnosis, giving prescription, surgery, employing medical equipment, preparing lab reports and so on. When medical errors are frequent, negative outcomes such as increase of mortality rate, infections, variety of disabilities, physical injuries, and considerable costs incurred to compensate the patients are inevitable.
Death toll due to medical errors in the USA is more than that by breast cancer, car accidents, or HIV. A study in Germany reported 100k medical errors that led to 25k deaths per year. Medical error in Australia is responsible for 18k preventable deaths and more than 50k patients are disabled each year by medical errors. Results of a review study on medical errors reported a rate of 52 medical errors per 100 admittances and 24 medical errors per 1000 days/patient.