Patient safety in emergency medicine

Similar to other medical disciplines with a long history, the discipline of patient safety can be traced back to the time of Hippocrates, with his famous teaching ‘first do no harm’. Similar to other medical disciplines contributing to the health of humans, the patient safety movement has had profound effects on the well-being of the public. Patient safety did not receive the attention it deserved until recent decades when it became a truly international movement. However, the current literature in this field, especially in the form of a textbook, is relatively small scale.