Susannah Fox:

The publication by The Institute of Medicine of « To Err Is Human » may have launched the modern era of patient safety, but patients could reasonably be said to have attended to these issues long before the IOM.

Unfortunately patient-initiated projects to improve the quality and safety of care have often happened with no engagement or recognition by mainstream professionals. Those academic and other professionals engaged in the patient safety movement frequently see safety as a system issue, where the system includes physicians, other providers, and institutions. It is something done “to” or “for” patients, not by them. This may be because of the history of adversarial patient-provider interactions over medical errors. Fortunately, new technologies and cultural shifts have set the stage for increased patient-provider collaboration on patient safety.

See on www.pewinternet.org