TY - JOUR T1 - Diagnosing diagnostic errors: it’s time to evolve the patient safety research paradigm JF - BMJ Quality & Safety JO - BMJ Qual Saf SP - 701 LP - 703 DO - 10.1136/bmjqs-2021-014517 VL - 31 IS - 10 AU - David C Stockwell AU - Paul Sharek Y1 - 2022/10/01 UR - http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/31/10/701.abstract N2 - Optimising patient safety in the hospital setting remains a significant challenge for modern healthcare. Substantial efforts have been made to eradicate patient harm events since the 1999 publication of To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System.1 Nevertheless, a recent meta-analysis of 94 adult inpatient studies concluded that 8.6 hospital harm events occur for every 100 patient admissions, with over half (52.6%) judged to be preventable.2 Estimates in high-risk paediatric settings suggest a rate as high as 40 patient harm events per 100 admissions.3–5 Although patient harms within the subset known as hospital-acquired conditions in the USA have declined in the adult and paediatric populations,6 7 multicentred, longitudinal studies of adult2 8 and paediatric inpatients9 have shown no significant improvement in overall harm rates over the past 20 years.As highlighted in the study by Lam et al, 10 in this edition of BMJ Q&S, the subtype of harm events resulting from diagnostic errors has recently garnered a great deal of attention in patient safety efforts. Diagnostic errors have been studied with several methods and in many settings, including primary care sites,11 paediatric intensive care units12 13 and paediatric emergency departments (EDs).14 The methods used to identify diagnostic errors range from basic chart review to focused chart reviews with … ER -