The book, Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes, was published today by Rugged Land Publishers, New York.

One of the authors, Robert M. Wachter, MD, chief of the medical service and chair of the patient safety committee at UCSF Medical Center, will discuss the topic at a public forum on the UCSF campus as part of the UCSF Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The event, which features Wachter in conversation with KQED's Michael Krasny, will take place Wednesday, February 25 at 7 PM. Tickets are $15. More information is available at http://lifelonglearning.ucsf.edu.

Wachter, also a UCSF professor of medicine, and co-author Kaveh G. Shojania, MD, UCSF assistant professor of medicine, have pioneered a case-based approach to teaching doctors, nurses, administrators and patients about medical mistakes.

Their case-based approach first appeared in a series in the Annals of Internal Medicine called "Quality Grand Rounds," and later in their federally-sponsored web-based medical errors journal, AHRQ WebM&M (http://webmm.ahrq.gov).

"In Internal Bleeding, we extend our approach of pulling back the curtain to discuss dramatic and compelling stories of medical mistakes, accompanied by evidence-based insights and research that points the way toward solutions," said Wachter.

He explained that the book describes previously reported and well-known cases from clinics and hospitals around the country, such as a case in which a neurosurgeon operated on the wrong side of two different patients' brains and a case in wh
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Contact: Maureen McInaney
mmcinaney@pubaff.ucsf.edu
415-476-2557
University of California - San Francisco
4-Feb-2004