College of American Pathologists Special Topic Symposium on Error in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine—Practical Lessons for the Pathologist: Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This article is an overview to the all-day special topic symposium on patient safety and error reduction, entitled “Error in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine: Practical Lessons for the Pathologist,” which was held at the College of American Pathologists annual meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz, on September 20, 2004. The intent of the symposium was to provide pathologists with useful take-home lessons related to error identification, reduction, and risk avoidance for adoption in practice. Error reduction in the laboratory has always been an implied, if not directly stated goal of laboratory quality management programs, but given the nature of humans to err, the call for redesign of the health care system, and the impending threat of national patient safety legislation calling for medical error reporting and disclosure, we believe that this topic of error will be one of continued interest to practicing pathologists for many years.