Three papers in this month's BJGP focus on making an accurate, timely diagnosis — of cancer, dementia, and schizophrenia, all serious problems which, if diagnosed at an early stage, may be amenable to interventions of various kinds. In the most recent edition of Tomorrow's Doctors1 the General Medical Council brings patient safety to centre stage, although with more of an emphasis on preventing medical harm than on avoiding misdiagnosis.
Diagnostic errors — missed or delayed diagnosis — appear to be surprisingly common in both hospital and community medical practice, and a growing body of research is beginning to tease out the causes of error and, thereby, devise approaches to prevent it.2 Between 40 000 and 80 000 hospital deaths in the US are thought to result from errors in diagnosis, and post-mortem studies reveal an incorrect or …