Medical Errors: Promoting a Culture of Patient Safety — Psychologist Course

This course satisfies continuing education relicensure requirements on prevention of medical errors for Florida psychologists. The purpose of this course is to promote patient safety and improve patient outcomes by providing an overview of the safety concerns facing health care systems today, including statistics and background on the magnitude of the problem and error reduction, prevention and root cause analysis. This course includes discussion within the mental health practice that carry the potential for “medical” errors including improper diagnosis; failure to comply with abuse reporting laws; inadequate assessment of potential for violence; failure to detect medical conditions presenting as a psychological/psychiatric disorder.

Current Florida Board of Psychology relicensure requirements available here.

Target Audience

Psychologists (Instructional Level: Intermediate) licensed in the State of Florida.

Baptist Health South  Florida is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Baptist Health South Florida maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion, participants should be able to: 

  • Describe the incidence of medical errors and the effect on patient safety.
  • Explain the role of the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) task forces on Improving the Quality of Healthcare in America. 
  • Recognize error-prone situations, processes and factors, and create a culture of safety in order to reduce errors. 
  • Identify processes to approach error reduction and prevention in order to improve patient outcomes. 
  • Define the process and benefit of root cause analysis.
  • Delineate Baptist Health policies and procedures for reporting medical errors.
  • Identify safety needs of special populations.
  • Discuss areas within the mental health practice that carry the potential for “medical” errors including improper diagnosis; failure to comply with abuse reporting laws; inadequate assessment of potential for violence; failure to detect medical conditions presenting as a psychological/psychiatric disorder.
Additional information
Bibliography: 
  • DeAngelis, T. (2016, September) Preventing medical errors: Psychologists are revamping health-care systems to keep patients safe from life-threatening mistakes. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org.
  • Frese, M., & Keith, N. (2015). Action errors, error management, and learning in organizations. Annual review of psychology, 66, 661-687.
  • Hunt, D. F., Bailey, J., Lennox, B. R., Crofts, M., & Vincent, C. (2021). Enhancing psychological safety in mental health services. International journal of mental health systems, 15(1), 33.
Course Summary
Available credit: 
  • 2.00 Psychology CE
  • 2.00 General certificate of attendance
  • 2.00 Florida Board of Psychology
Course opens: 
06/01/2022
Course expires: 
05/31/2023

Barry M. Crown, Ph.D., J.D.
Psychologist
Baptist, Doctors, Homestead and South Miami Hospitals

Louis T. Gidel, M.D., Ph.D., FCCP
Chief Medical Informatics Officer and
Chief Quality Medical Director of Telehealth
Baptist Health South Florida

Mark L. Graber, M.D., FACP
CMO, Founder and President Emeritus 
Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine
Senior Fellow, Health Care Quality and Outcomes 
RTI International
Professor Emeritus, SUNY Stony Brook
Palm Desert, California

Rafael A. Rivas-Vazquez, Psy.D.
Clinical Neuropsychologist
First Choice Neuropsychology

Yvette A. King-Archer, BSN, R.N.
Corporate Patient Safety Officer
Risk Management
Baptist Health South Florida

Elizabeth Greene Taquechel, M.S., R.N., CPHQ
Corporate Patient Safety Officer
Risk Management/Patient Safety Department
Baptist Health South Florida

Rafael A. Rivas-Vazquez, Psy.D., faculty for this educational activity, has no relevant financial relationship with ineligible companies* to disclose, and has indicated that the presentation or discussion will not include off-label or unapproved product usage. 

Barry M. Crown, Ph.D., J.D., conference director for this educational activity, Louis T. Gidel, M.D., Ph.D., speaker,  Yvette A. King-Archer, BSN, R.N., and Elizabeth Greene Taquechel, M.S., R.N., CPHQ, content contributors and all other non-faculty contributors and others involved in the planning, development, and editing/review of the content have no relevant financial relationships to disclose with ineligible companies.*

Mark L. Graber, M.D., FACP, is on the advisory board of Buoy Health and Peach Intellihealth. He will not include off-label or unapproved product usage in his presentation or discussion.

All of the relevant financial relationships listed for this individual have been mitigated.

*Ineligible companies - Companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

Disclosure Policy and Disclaimer 

Available Credit

  • 2.00 Psychology CE
  • 2.00 General certificate of attendance
  • 2.00 Florida Board of Psychology
Please login or register for a Baptist Health CME account to take this course.

Baptist Health South Florida CME Department automatically reports credits to the Florida Department of Health through CE Broker. Please be sure your profile is filled out correctly with License and Profession.

To self-report to other States or organizations, Certificates of Completion can be accessed on your CME Portal Account under My Activities. 

Required Hardware/Software

PC/Mac Users
PC/Mac Users

This site is supported on the most recent stable releases of the following browsers:

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Microsoft Edge
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Moxilla Firefox
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Internet Explorer

Attention: Internet Explorer Users
This site offers limited support for Internet Explorer 11 (IE11). When using IE11, you will be prompted to download course videos instead of viewing them in the browser. After the course video downloads, the recordings will play.

Mobile Users
Mobile Users

This site is supported on the following mobile devices:

  • Apple iOS mobile devices running iOS 10 or later
  • Android mobile devices running Android 4.4 or later, with the latest release of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox
Technical Support
Technical Support

If you are experiencing technical difficulties or have received an error message, please send an email to CME@baptisthealth.net and include a print screen of the error message, your browser name and version, username and URL where the error occurred. You can expect a response within 48 hours.