**6. Clinical vignette**

Eighty-year-old Denisa Conolly used to wake up during the night with symptoms of dyspnea and wheezing. Her physician diagnosed her with asthma and prescribed albuterol, an asthma bronchodilator. Two days later, Mrs. Conolly was admitted to the hospital at the Coronary Care Unit (CCU) suffering from a heart attack. In his letter to the Head of Medical Services, the cardiologist reported that a diagnostic error had been realized by Mrs. Conolly's physician regarding the abnormal congestive heart failure and had administered treatment for asthma. The cardiologist reported that treatment might have accelerated the heart attack.

IV intravenous

OR operation room

**Author details**

Vasiliki Kapaki1

**References**

**255**(13):606-614

2018. p. Ch. 01

2018. p. Ch. 08

NPSF National Patient Safety Foundation

QuIC Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force

\* and Kyriakos Souliotis2

\*Address all correspondence to: vkapaki2005@gmail.com

American Medical Association. 1955;**159**(15):1452-1456

Key to Avoiding Medical Errors in the Developing World. 2013

[6] Reason J. Human Error. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1990

[7] Reason J. Human error: Models and management. BMJ. 2000;**320**(7237):768-770

[8] Bogner MS. Human Error in Medicine. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 1994

NRC National Research Council

SAD Seasonal Affective Disorder

WHO World Health Organization

1 Health Policy Institute, Athens, Greece

JCAHO Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations

Defining Adverse Events and Determinants of Medical Errors in Healthcare

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.75616

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2 Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Peloponnese, Corinth, Greece

[1] Moser RH. Diseases of medical progress. The New England Journal of Medicine. 1956;

[2] Barr DP. Hazards of modern diagnosis and therapy: The price we pay. Journal of the

[3] Millwood V. As Patient Safety Awareness Week Begins, Project HOPE Says Education Is

[4] Tolentino JC et al. Introductory chapter: Developing patient safety champions. In: Firstenberg MS, Stawicki SP, editors. Vignettes in Patient Safety, Vol. 2. Rijeka: InTech;

[5] Lin A et al. Wrong-site procedures: Preventable never events that continue to happen. In: Firstenberg MS, Stawicki SP, editors. Vignettes in Patient Safety. Vol. 2. Rijeka: InTech;
