The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Hospital Labs Studying Patient Safety Consortium and Error Reduction

Definition of Anatomic Pathology Testing Error Patient safety researchers and practitioners are not agreed on the definition of medical error.22,23 The IOM definition is that a medical error is the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim.3 Some have argued that this definition of error is too broad and classifies events as errors when in fact they may have occurred naturally in the course of normal medical care. For example, patient safety researchers disagree on the classification of a patient death immediately attributable to The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Hospital Labs Studying Patient Safety Consortium and Error Reduction Stephen S. Raab, MD,1 Dana M. Grzybicki, MD, PhD,1 Janine E. Janosky, PhD,2 Richard J. Zarbo, MD, DMD,3 Kim R. Geisinger, MD,4 Frederick A. Meier, MD,3 Chris Jensen, MD,5 Eva M. Wojcik, MD,6 Marian Haber, MD,7 and Stanley J. Geyer, MD8*