ArticleBMJ quality & safety2013
The incidence of diagnostic error in medicine.
Article in BMJ quality & safety, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 209 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
209 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Understanding diagnostic conversations in clinical practice: A systematic review.Patient education and counseling · 2023Pooled it
- Comparing rates of adverse events detected in incident reporting and the Global Trigger Tool: a systematic review.International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Case-finding for common mental disorders in primary care using routinely collected data: a systematic review.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2019Pooled it
- Cognitive biases associated with medical decisions: a systematic review.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2016Pooled it
- Testing a Novel Deliberate Practice Intervention to Improve Diagnostic Reasoning in Trauma Triage: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2023Trial
- Should electronic differential diagnosis support be used early or late in the diagnostic process? A multicentre experimental study of Isabel.BMJ quality & safety · 2022Trial
- Using Virtual Patients to Explore the Clinical Reasoning Skills of Medical Students: Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Trial
- Online patient simulation training to improve clinical reasoning: a feasibility randomised controlled trial.BMC medical education · 2020Trial
- Trial
- A cognitive forcing tool to mitigate cognitive bias - a randomised control trial.BMC medical education · 2019Trial
- Hospitalization for community-acquired febrile urinary tract infection: validation and impact assessment of a clinical prediction rule.BMC infectious diseases · 2017Trial
- Retrieval-augmented reasoning reshapes collective reliability in text-based radiology question answering.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Clinical pearls and pitfalls in inborn errors of immunity: An expert-derived framework for diagnostic pattern recognition.Pediatric allergy and immunology : official publication of the European Society of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology · 2026Review
- The Other Side of the Stethoscope: Clinician-Facing Deepfakes and the Symmetry of Synthetic Deception.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2026Article
- The History of Evidence-Based Medicine and Structural Diagnostic Failure.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2026Article
- Uncovering diagnostic errors in dentistry through critical incident reports: a mixed-methods analysis.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Screening for Missed Opportunities for Diagnosis in the ED Using eTriggers and Large Language Models.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- How postgraduate medical trainees conceptualise management reasoning: A qualitative study.Medical education · 2026Article
- A Safety-II approach to learn from practice variation in the diagnostic process in the emergency department: an action research study.Diagnosis (Berlin, Germany) · 2026Article
149 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A wide variety of research studies suggest that breakdowns in the diagnostic process result in a staggering toll of harm and patient deaths. These include autopsy studies, case reviews, surveys of patient and physicians, voluntary reporting systems, using standardised patients, second reviews, diagnostic testing audits and closed claims reviews. Although these different approaches provide important information and unique insights regarding diagnostic errors, each has limitations and none is well suited to establishing the incidence of diagnostic error in actual practice, or the aggregate rate of error and harm. We argue that being able to measure the incidence of diagnostic error is essential to enable research studies on diagnostic error, and to initiate quality improvement projects aimed at reducing the risk of error and harm. Three approaches appear most promising in this regard: (1) using 'trigger tools' to identify from electronic health records cases at high risk for diagnostic error; (2) using standardised patients (secret shoppers) to study the rate of error in practice; (3) encouraging both patients and physicians to voluntarily report errors they encounter, and facilitating this process.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.