Error and near-miss reporting: View from North America

Due to the signicant potential for serious and catastrophic errors, patient and employee safety is of critical concern in radiation oncology. One of the key components for developing a highly reliable organization (HRO) (Weick and Sutclie 2007) is the ability of an organization to assess its weaknesses and gaps in error prevention measures and identify processes for prevention of potential future errors. Clearly, this requires that an organization has a means of reporting and tracking errors. Due to this need, error and near-miss reporting have been the subject of a great deal of investigation and development for several decades and across a wide spectrum of industries, including some areas of healthcare. It is commonly accepted that the value of error and near-miss reporting for the purposes of enhanced system reliability, performance improvement, and error prevention cannot be overstated.