Empty hospital bed.

The Inevitability of Error in Health Care

By John Tingle

A recent publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), a first draft of a global patient safety action plan 2021-2030, seems to have rekindled conversations about the “inevitability of error” in the field of patient safety.

The “inevitability of error” argument indicates that mistakes in health care do inevitably happen; that they are the consequences of the complex nature of health care treatment. Nursing and medicine depend on people, and nobody is infallible — we all make mistakes.

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