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The nomenclature of safety and quality of care for patients with congenital cardiac disease: a report of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Database Taskforce Subcommittee on Patient Safety

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2008

Jeffrey Phillip Jacobs*
Affiliation:
The Congenital Heart Institute of Florida (CHIF), Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, All Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Tampa, University of South Florida College of Medicine, Cardiac Surgical Associates (CSA), Saint Petersburg and Tampa, Florida, United States of America
Oscar J. Benavidez
Affiliation:
Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
Emile A. Bacha
Affiliation:
Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
Henry L. Walters III
Affiliation:
Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan, United States of America
Marshall Lewis Jacobs
Affiliation:
Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
*
Correspondence to: Jeffrey P. Jacobs, MD, FACS, FACC, FCCP, Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeon, Surgical Director of Heart Transplantation and ECMO, The Congenital Heart Institute of Florida (CHIF), Clinical Associate Professor, University of South Florida (USF), Cardiac Surgical Associates (CSA), 603 Seventh Street South, Suite 450, Saint Petersburg, FL 33701, United States of America. Tel: (727) 822 6666; Fax: (727) 821 5994; Cell Phone: (727) 235 3100; E-mail: JeffJacobs@msn.com; http://www.heartsurgery-csa.com/; http://www.CHIF.us/

Abstract

A large body of literature devoted to “patient safety” and error prevention exists and utilizes a nomenclature that can be applied specifically to the field of congenital cardiac disease and aid in the goals of increasing the safety of patients, decreasing medical error, minimizing mortality and morbidity, and evaluating quality of care. The purpose of this manuscript is to suggest and document a quality of health care taxonomy and the appropriate application of this nomenclature of “patient safety” to the specialty of congenital cardiac disease, with special emphasis on the following ten terms: morbidity, complication, medical error, adverse event, harm, near miss, iatrogenesis, iatrogenic complication, medical injury, and sentinel event. Each of these terms is commonly utilized in the medical literature without universal agreement on their meaning and relationship. It is our hope that the standardization of the definitions of these terms, as they are applied to the analysis of outcomes of the treatments applied to patients with congenital and paediatric cardiac disease, will facilitate improved methodologies to assess and improve quality of care in our profession.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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