Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Room: How Missed Conditions Happen

Emergency departments handle chest pain, head injuries, fevers, and strokes in the same hallway, often at the same hour. Physicians there make fast decisions with partial information, and most of those decisions are sound. A small share are not, and a missed or delayed diagnosis can change a patient’s life within hours. Research on diagnostic error has pointed repeatedly to patterns rather than isolated blunders. Patients with unusual symptoms, patients who look younger or healthier than the typical case, and patients seen during crowded shifts are among those at higher risk. Knowing how these errors form makes it easier to recognize when a hospital’s care deserves a second look. Why the emergency room is prone to error Emergency physicians work under constant interruption. A doctor may be examining one patient when a trauma alert pulls attention to another, then return to the first chart twenty minutes later with the thread partly lost.

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