Do Health professionals make mistakes? It has been estimated that 98,000 patients die in hospitals each year because of medical errors. the equivalent of a jumbo jet crash per day, and three times the number of people who die on highways each year.

Every day two patients have either the wrong limb amputated or the wrong kidney taken out.

Communication the root cause of medical errors...

The results can be disastrous. Kohsin [Beth Kohsin, MS, RN, CPHQ] points to data from the Joint Commission that found that between 1995 and 2004 communication problems were the leading root causes of the following:

Approximately one to three percent of all hospital admissions will result in death or harm from injuries, not from their disease, but from the medical care itself...

Arthur Garson Jr. MD, MPH
Dean, School of Medicine & VP University of Virginia healthcare Half-Truths 2007

...by 2005, communications jumped to the leading cause of infections, accounting for 75% of them according to the Joint Commission. Kohsin says she doesn't think communication is any more difficult in the healthcare industry than in other high-risk fields. "But, for some reason, we’ve been a little slower on the uptake."

Briefings on Patient Safety Vol. 8,No. 3 March 2007