Expecting Diagnosis Errors

Duration: 32:13

This podcast is an episode of Safety Net. You can find other episodes and subscribe using the links to the right.

Commentators

• Gordon Schiff, MD

In a talk titled “Diagnostic Errors in Medicine,” Dr. Gordon Schiff offers clinicians a variety of methods to anticipate diagnosis errors and prevent them. It’s from a day-long course on patient safety and risk management in primary care on October 13, 2018 in Boston. The event was jointly sponsored by two Harvard teaching hospitals and CRICO, the insurance and patient safety program for all of the Harvard medical institutions and their affiliates.

Dr. Schiff is a practicing general internist and Associate Director of Brigham and Women’s Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice; Quality and Safety Director for the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care; and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has published widely in the areas of medication and diagnosis safety and was a reviewer and contributor to the 2015 National Academy of Medicine (IOM) Report Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. He is Principal Investigator of a recently completed two-year project studying both inpatient and outpatient diagnostic pitfalls. He was recently awarded a grant from the Gordon and Betty More Foundation to create a multi-faceted research learning network PRIDE (Primary-care Research in Diagnosis Errors) to study and improve diagnosis and develop principles for more appropriate and cost-effective diagnosis.

Dr. Schiff is also the recipient of an award from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation for Medical Humanism to study professional-patient boundaries and relationships. He is the author/editor of the Joint Commission Resources book Getting Results: Reliably Communicating and Acting on Critical Test Results. He chairs the editorial board of Medical Care as well, and serves on editorial boards of the Journal Public Health Policy and BMJ Quality and Safety in Healthcare.