Little-known ‘failure to rescue’ is most common hospital safety mistake

From MSNBC:

High-profile medical errors such as operating on the wrong body part or receiving a mistaken dose of drugs should take a back seat to a far more common and insidious mistake, a new report reveals.

For the fifth straight year, an analysis of errors in the nation’s hospitals found that the most reported patient safety risk is a little-known but always-fatal problem called “failure to rescue.”

The term refers to cases where caregivers fail to notice or respond when a patient is dying of preventable complications in a hospital.