Ara Darzi: Medical errors should be reported so we can learn from them

Healthcare workers should be aware that they will not be punished for medical errors, so they can more freely report their errors, and we can all learn from them, said the former health minister of the UK, British House of Lords member, director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, and Executive Chair of the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Ara Darzi at his seminar at the American University of Armenia.

‘Medical error is a term often used, but there is also another term – error as human, as we all know. We all make errors. I have made 3-4 errors by the time I’ve woken up this morning, thank goodness, none of them had consequences. The whole idea of medical errors is to have the transparency to allow people to report these errors so we can learn from them. It’s not a tool to punish them,’ Lord Darzi said.

According to Lord Darzi, if clinicians are afraid to report their errors, those errors will go underground, and if it happens, more and more medical errors will occur, and no one will ever know about them, and it will be even more unsafe.

‘You need to make sure that the clinicians, not just the doctors, but the nurses too, have the ability to feel that ‘I will not be punished if I report this, although it might be an error that I contributed to, I need to learn from that’.’

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