Robert Wachter and Kaveh Shojania. New York, NY: Rugged Land; 2004. $24.95, 441 pages. ISBN: 1-59071-016-9.

“We are all in this together”

So ends this riveting new book, Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America’s Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes, clearly acknowledging why this book is for everyone—the public, our patients and families, and healthcare professionals. Acute and critical care nurses will want to read this book as it does 2 things in a unique and compelling way: first, it outlines the crisis of medical errors in stark reality, with examples we all know and whisper about, by focusing on system failures instead of blaming individuals. Second, it offers practical solutions to stem the tide of medical errors.

The authors are practicing physicians in internal medicine at a large medical center, who refreshingly and humbly start off the book with a personal catalog of errors and near misses. They make a...

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