Editorial Board
To Reduce Medical Errors, Make Them Public
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Surgeons have an encouraging term for their mistakes: “never events,” because they should never happen. Yet they do, with startling frequency.
At least 4,000 times a year in the U.S., surgeons leave a sponge or instrument inside a patient, perform an incorrect procedure, or operate on a wrong body part or even a wrong patient, according to a recent study from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. That estimate is probably low, based as it is on malpractice claims, because many errors don’t turn into legal actions. Some go undetected altogether.