Professional Documents
Culture Documents
P
atient safety has been a concern of the United of preventable adverse events is estimated to be be-
States health care system since the early twen- tween $17 billion and $29 billion per year, of which
tieth century. The Flexner report1 on medical over half are health care costs.3 Another report from
education, published in 1910, and the Carnegie Johns Hopkins Childrens Center and the Agency
Foundation report on dental education in the United for Healthcare Research and Quality reviewed 5.7
States and Canada, written by William J. Gies2 and million records of patients under nineteen years of
published in 1926, both spoke of the need for greater age who were hospitalized in 2000; these records
attention to patient safety. The Gies report, which were from twenty-seven states. Of the 52,000 chil-
brought about dental education as we know it today, dren identified by the researchers as being harmed
made many recommendations, including calls for by unsafe medical care during their hospital stay,
better cooperation between dentistry and medicine, 4,483 suffered a fatal injury.4 As the complexity of
expansion of dental research, and greater apprecia- care provided by the health care system increases,
tion by dental teachers of the biological and medical the chance of error or failure also increases. Al-
side of dentistry.2 Although many areas of medical though the magnitude and complexity of patient
and dental care have progressed since then, the oc- safety issues in dentistry differ from those found in
currence of errors or failures continues to challenge hospitals, attitudes towards those safety issues have
health care providers. not been systematically explored in dental schools,
In 1999, the Institute of Medicines report and there is no published research that has quantified
To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System the type and number of adverse events that occur in
focused attention on the number and frequency of dental care.
errors in inpatient hospitals. This report stated that In general, mainstream organizations working
errors cause between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths every on patient safety problems in medicine have done
year in American hospitals. The total national cost little to study these issues and determine how they
Table 2. Comparison of responses among respondent groups percentage of responses that were positive
Survey on Patient Safety: Composite Level Benchmarks: Dentists Dental Dental Responses
Culture Survey Dimension Average % Positive Responses (n=92) Students Support from Seven
in Twenty Hospitals (n=107) Staff U.S. Dental
(n=1419) (n=129) Schools
(n=328)
If the percentage of positive responses was more than 5% above the results of the hospital group, the results were considered
above average. If the percentage of positive responses was more than 5% below the hospital group benchmark, it was consid-
ered below average. All results between 5% above or below the benchmark were considered to be average.
Question was Please give your work area in this organization an overall grade on patient safety.