Human error in medical practice: an unavoidable presence

Abstract

Making mistakes is a human characteristic and a mechanism to learn, but at the same time it may become a threat to human beings in some scenarios. Aviation and Medicine are good examples of this. Some data are presented about the frequency of error in Medicine, its ubiquity and the circumstances that favor it. A reflection is done about how the error is being managed and why it is not more often discussed. It is proposed that the first step in learning from an error is to accept it as an unavoidable presence.