What is diagnostic safety? A review of safety science paradigms and rethinking paths to improving diagnosis (27 May 2024)

Summary

Researchers have traditionally focused diagnostic safety efforts on identifying errors and their causes with the goal of reducing diagnostic error rates. More recently, complementary approaches to diagnostic errors have focused on improving diagnostic performance drawn from the safety sciences. These approaches have been called Safety-II and Safety-III, which apply resilience engineering and system safety principles, respectively. This review explores the safety science paradigms and their implications for analysing diagnostic errors, highlighting their distinct yet complementary perspectives.