According to contemporary thinking on the safety patients, several factors cause some medical errors in hospitals and clinics to happen. Equipment failures or caregivers' errors are seldom seen as the sole cause of medical mishaps. Often the breakdowns are caused by human failure in decision making and most accidents are results of failures in all levels. Errors attributed to humans may have been the result of inadequate training, badly designed procedures, or poorly made items' checklists. In the current thinking, human error is the starting point in an investigation and prevention. The investigation must focus on finding ways to minimize or curb human errors that could jeopardize the safety of patients. This requires an understanding of the factors and conditions affecting human performance. Cultural considerations could not be ruled out in providing safety measures for patients as human behavior is subject to cultural influence. Culture serves to bind people together as members of groups and provides clues as how people will behave in both normal and unusual situations. It is a complex social dynamics that serves as a framework for interpersonal interactions. In order to reduce medical errors which have reached a frightening level, penalties must strictly be enforced against the erring and negligent medical staff whether they are doctors or nurses. We need to give teeth to the law to instill awareness among medical people who don't care about the patients' lives. One of the issues that has surfaced and being talked about is the increasingly rate of medical mistakes in hospitals and clinics that come to the spotlight lately following the death of two women in a public hospital in Jeddah. The Minister of Health has ordered at once the formation of a five-member committee comprising of senior officials at the Health Directorate in Makkah to look into this case in which 16 doctors and nurses were thought to be responsible for their death. In the few past years, medical mistakes have become worrisome, giving rise to the need for measures to punish medical people who commit errors that endanger the lives of patients. __
