The incidence of diagnostic error in medicine: a narrative review (15 June 2013)

Summary

This narrative review in BMJ Quality & Safety argues that being able to measure the incidence of diagnostic error is essential to enable research studies on diagnostic error and to initiate quality improvement projects aimed at reducing the risk of error and harm. It highlights three approaches that may help with measuring the incidence of diagnostic error:

1. Using ‘trigger tools’ to identify from electronic health records cases at high risk for diagnostic error
2. Using standardised patients (secret shoppers) to study the rate of error in practice
3. Encouraging both patients and physicians to voluntarily report errors they encounter, and facilitating this process