Patient Safety Research in USA and Australia Finds 20% of Patients Report Errors in their Care
Twenty percent of Australians and 20% of Americans self report that a medical, medication or laboratory error was made in their treatment of care over the last two years. The study covered seven countries.

TORONTO, ON, August 08, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Twenty percent of Australians and 20% of Americans self report that a medical, medication or laboratory error was made in their treatment of care over the last two years.

This is one finding of research reported in the journal Healthcare Quarterly. It includes data set of adults aged 18 and older in seven different countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, totaling 11,910 survey respondents. The editor (Dr. Ross Baker, Professor at the University of Toronto) writes "healthcare has lagged in creating the types of effective safety learning systems seen in other high-risk industries."

This study confirms that self-reported medical error is a common problem in Canada and other comparable industrialized nations such as the United States and Australia. While the rate of self-reported error ranged from 12 to 20 percent, Australia, the United States and Canada ranked the worst among the seven countries, which closely follows a 2005 survey of patient perceptions of safety in which these same three countries were the worst of six compared countries (Davis et al. 2006).

Report Title: Self-Reported Medical Errors in Seven Countries
Report Authors: Joshua O'Hagan, Neil J. MacKinnon, David Persaud and Holly Etchegary

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