Latent Failures of the Individual Human Behavior as a Root Cause of Medical Errors

Abstract

The article has analyzed the main aspects of individual human behavior and its regulation in a three-contour context (individual, social and situational). It was shown that the visible phase of human behavior (the behavioral act) is a result of preceding complex psychological processes of interaction between mental thinking, emotions, mindset and motivation. The attention condition and stress level affect almost every subprocess of human behavior. The authors present the genesis of the medical errors at each subprocess of human behavior: perception (illusion and hallucination), information processing (cognitive illusion), decision making and planning (mistake), implementation (slip, laps and tripping). The work demonstrates the main types of violations in individual human behavior and also the fundamental differences between violations and errors. Taking into account the complexity of individual human behavior and the three contours of its regulation, the main principles to prevent medical errors and violations were formulated.