Medical error

Health Management Glossary

Patient Safety

Definition. A medical error is a failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a wrong plan to achieve an aim in health care.

Explanation

The report To Err Is Human made medical error a public policy issue and shifted attention from individuals to systems (Kohn et al., 2000). Reason’s distinction between active failures and latent conditions explains why errors are usually the end point of system weaknesses (Reason, 2000).

Errors and harm are related but not identical: many errors cause no harm, and some harm is not due to error. Trigger tools focus on harm (Resar et al., 2003), while studies of transitions such as physician handoffs show where errors cluster (Dicker et al., 2025).

Related concepts

Adverse event Swiss cheese model Clinical handover Just culture Human factors

Read on The Health Topics

• Measuring Harm with Trigger Tools
• Improving Physician Inpatient Handoffs: A Systematic Review

References

Allen‐Dicker, J., Kerwin, M., Wallins, J. S., Rao, N., Mara, R., Chilov, M., Batra, C., & Korenstein, D. (2025). Physician inpatient handoffs – Patient and physician outcomes: A systematic review. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 20, 607–622. doi:10.1002/jhm.13583

Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (Eds.). (2000). To err is human: Building a safer health system. National Academy Press.

Reason, J. (2000). Human error: Models and management. BMJ, 320(7237), 768–770. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.320.7237.768

Resar, R. K., Rozich, J. D., & Classen, D. (2003). Methodology and rationale for the measurement of harm with trigger tools. Quality and Safety in Health Care, 12 (Suppl II), ii39–ii45.

Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Medical error. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/medical-error/

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