Case studies evaluated by the Institute of Medicine indicated that 4-16% of patients have suffered avoidable harm.
This article describes the difficulty in maintaining reliability in the field of critical care medicine. It is useful in understanding the problem of patient safety, and offers an interdisciplinary look at safety and reliability. Among the barriers of patient safety is the blame culture inherent in medicine.
Bion, J. F., Abrusci, T., & Hibbert, P. (2010). Human factors in the management of the critically ill patient. British Journal of Anaesthesia, 105(1), 26-33. doi:10.1093/bja/aeq126