14

Community medicine is not free from a risk of error as regards diagnosis or drug prescription. The only advantage is that awareness of this risk has compelled physicians to be up-to-date with the latest scientific breakthrough (evidence-based medicine). Any in-service training should really be the ideal opportunity for physicians to share their experiences. Whilst taking care not to confuse error with negligence, the most harmless error, once it has been spotted and discussed, always has preventive value. It is in hospital practice that the risk of error is the greatest due to the increasing complexity of medical practice and the involvement of large numbers of people. But it also extends throughout the entire healthcare system. Harmful errors are usually due to an overall malfunction of the healthcare chain, in a word, to systemic error. Understanding such errors should be a critical objective if we are to prevent future errors, since an error that is not understood is an error that will recur...