Forty-two percent of Americans have been personally affected by medical errors, according to a nationwide survey by the National Patient Safety Foundation, a division of the American Medical Association.
Medical errors can also be life-threatening.
They lead to between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths each year, according to an Institute of Medicine report released in November 1999. Medical errors lead to between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths each year. After surgery to mend a shattered elbow bone at a top-ranked hospital, Ley was put on a morphine pump that was attached to an alarm that sounded if the dosage was too high. On the third night, nurses told the family they had turned the pump off because the young girl's pain had lessened. But Jacqueline's mother, Carol Ley, realized something had gone terribly wrong when she woke up that night.