According to the World Health Organization,
A diagnosis identifies a patient’s health problem and is a key to accessing the care and treatment they need.
A diagnosis error is the failure to establish a correct and timely explanation of a patient’s health problem, which can include delayed, incorrect, or missed diagnoses, or a failure to communicate that explanation to the patient.
Diagnosis safety can be improved through interventions based in systems thinking, human factors, and active patient/ family engagement as partners in care. These actions include structured communication, access to medical records, monitoring and learning from diagnosis errors, and creating conditions for safer care in primary care and across the patient’s journey.
Patient Safety Learning hub (PSL Hub), explains how errors can happen at every stage of the diagnosis process and can happen in all healthcare settings. Diagnosis errors can be divided into three categories:
- Delayed diagnosis – where harm is caused because of a health condition not being identified at an earlier stage. This may happen because of failure to use the correct tests, outdated forms of assessment or failure to act on results of monitoring or testing.
- Incorrect diagnosis – where the wrong diagnosis is made and the true cause is then discovered later on. This can lead to patients receiving the wrong treatments, that may even be harmful. They also may not receive the appropriate treatment for their condition.
- Missed diagnosis – where a patient’s illness or health condition is not identified, which can result in their condition worsening and avoidable harm because they are not receiving any treatment.
Let’s talk about diagnosis safety on social media (#WPSD2024 and #patients4safety) or contact hello@patients4safety.ca if you have ideas, questions, or feedback.
