In October, I spent a couple of days caring for a friend undergoing high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell replacement as an outpatient. My responsibilities were very simple, and in performing the most clinical of my duties — dispensing medications — I committed an error.

In October 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved a new parent education campaign developed by the Centers of Disease Prevention & Control’s (CDC) National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities together with a broad coalition of stakeholders interested in safe neonatal healthcare.

On January 15, 2001, Justin Micalizzi, a healthy 11-year-old boy, was taken into surgery to incise and drain a swollen ankle. He was dead by 7:55 a.m. the next day, leaving behind two grieving and bewildered parents who desperately wanted to know why their son had died.

Various reports indicate that the use of barcodes for medication and patient tracking has made a minimal penetration in the critical care environment.

We appreciate this opportunity to tell you about an outstanding new resource for training healthcare providers in better teamwork practices, developed jointly by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) — TeamSTEPPS, which stands for Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety.

Several years ago while attending an executive retreat for senior hospital leadership from around the United States, my conversation with a CEO from a large southeast academic institution turned to medical errors.

Despite a national push toward the use of health information technology and increasing use of the Internet for medical information, not much is known about the knowledge and use of these applications by high school students (Thoenes, et al., 2006).

MRI suites hold unique dangers for patients and staff. Today’s high-strength clinical MRI scanners are up to 60,000 times the strength of the Earth’s own ambient magnetic field.

I was amused by a headline in a recent edition of a Chicago newspaper that read, “City Council considers ban on frying food in trans fat oils…” Can you imagine? Could this be another government regulation stating the obvious and trying to protect us from what we already know?

Call it election year politics or just sheer luck, but both houses of the United States Congress passed healthcare information technology (HIT) bills in less than a year.