Patient safety: time for a transformational change in medical education

Jorm, Christine M

doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb04018.x

Topics

To the Editor: The pace of improvement in the safety and quality of health care has been disappointing. However, the recent enthusiasm for medical education providing a new solution is troubling.1,2 The safety and quality movement has been regrettably dismissive of the need for creation of evidence.3 Indeed, it now seems that the focus on “dramatic” errors has been a distraction from the major volume of harm due to the poor care of patients with chronic disease.4

Sydney School of Public Health, Sydney University, Sydney, NSW.

Correspondence: christine.jorm@sydney.edu.au

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2. Stevens DP. Safe healthcare: we’re running out of excuses. Postgrad Med J 2010; 86: 129-130. (accessed Aug 2010).
3. Jorm CM, White SJ. Using research to make health care safer. Aust Health Rev 2009; 33: 400-407.
4. Amalberti R, Benhamou D, Auroy Y, Degos L. Adverse events in medicine: easy to count, complicated to understand, and complex to prevent. J Biomed Inform 2009. In press. doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2009.06.004.
5. Lucey C, Souba W. Perspective: the problem with the problem of professionalism. Acad Med 2010; 85: 1018-1024.
6. Van Mook WN, van Luijk SJ, O’Sullivan H, et al. The concepts of professionalism and professional behaviour: conflicts in both definition and learning outcomes. Eur J Intern Med 2009; 20: e85-e89.
7. Cohen MD. Reading Dewey: some implications for the study of routine. In: Adler PS, editor. The Oxford handbook of sociology and organization studies: classical foundations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009: 444-463.
8. Scott IA. Errors in clinical reasoning: causes and remedial strategies. BMJ 2009; 339: 22-25.

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