Medical errors on an inpatient neurology service

It has been proposed that "near misses" or "close calls" could serve as a focus for corrective action. Voluntary, anonymous error data were collected for 4 weeks and 235 events were reported: 168 were near misses and 67 resulted in adverse patient consequences. Of the 35 errors relating to diet, 17 (49%) resulted in adverse patient consequences, compared with only 5 of 43 (12%) of the errors related to medication.