Dentistry and Dental Materials

A medical error is a preventable adverse effect of care, whether or not it is evident or harmful to the patient’s. This might include an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis or treatment of a disease, injury, syndrome behavior, infection, or other ailment. Medical errors can occur anywhere in the health care system: In hospitals, clinics, surgery centers, doctors' offices, nursing homes, pharmacies, and patients' homes. Errors can involve medicines, surgery, diagnosis, equipment, or lab reports. These tips tell what you can do to get safer care. Medical errors leading to adverse events can occur in dentistry. The literature indicates that such errors broadly include: errors related to the prescription of medication, errors based on neglecting current scientific evidence regarding treatment, errors occurring during treatment or associated with improper maintenance of equipment, errors based on failure to properly maintain patient records, errors arising from the failure to acquire informed consent, the failure to establish and maintain appropriate infection control measures, the failure to properly diagnose, the failure to prevent accidents or complications associated with care or to pursue appropriate follow-up care when they occur, and the failure to follow authoritative dictates reflecting current standard of care or practice rules or regulations established by individual state laws. This presentation reviews the most common medical errors likely to occur in the practice of dentistry; outlines the recommendations by ADA for prevention of medical error and describe how to develop a root cause analysis and action plan to prevent further medical error.