The Severe Implications Of Criminalizing Errors: Creating A Safer Healthcare Environment

Here are three recommendations for those in the industry to help create a safer environment for nurses and patients. The way I see it, being human has become, in many respects, a criminal liability for nurses. Because, as humans, we aren't perfect. We make mistakes. And in the complex environment of healthcare, nurses and doctors make mistakes. In fact, in 1999, the Institutes of Medicine released a report titled "To Err is Human," which found that nearly 100,000 people die annually from medical errors. However, the report emphasized "that the problem is not bad people in health care it is that good people are working in bad systems that need to be made safer." Over the last two decades, healthcare systems and professionals have worked diligently to improve safety and outcomes for patients via "just culture," which is defined as "a system of shared accountability in which organizations are accountable for the systems they have designed and for responding to the behaviors of their employees in a fair and just manner."