There has been no more propitious time for such an activity. Such reports should meet high standards and should perhaps be surrounded by caveats about the differences between interesting progress and proven hypotheses. But, one way or another, these stories of real-time science must reach the mainstream so that we and our patients can reap the full harvest from efforts to improve. It is not a preoccupation of the past. It is not an objective that has been fulfilled or a reflection of a problem that has been solved.
Patient safety is an ongoing necessity.
And it must be constantly sustained by research, training, and daily application in the workplace. To some extent these changes may bring a measure of immediate health and vigor to the practice of medicine. But they also pose a worrisome threat. Patient safety has always been an issue of paramount importance to the medical profession, and much is already being done. The challenge is to keep pushing at the margins, striving to make our safe health care system even safer.