The Patient Safety Handbook, edited by Barbara J. Youngberg and Martin J. Hatlie. Sudbury, MA, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2004. 779 pages, hardcover, $102.95.

This pretentious volume has 69 contributors from a wide variety of professional backgrounds in the healthcare field. This multidisciplinary approach widens the perspective of each issue and enables the reader to obtain new and interesting insights into effective patient care and to the reduction of both errors of omission and errors of commission. This comprehensive viewing of the patient care scene should enable the contribution of each participant to become much more of a contributing participant than that of a staked territorial participant with marked off limits in the total picture. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a report-To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health care System. This popular report is a cue to many of the contributors varying aspects of the contents, in imaginative ways, were embellished and enlarged in great detail. Territoriality, traditional professional healthcare roles and local cultures all play a role in impending expressive and insightful management of each individual patient with all its related particulars. The many authors offer very insightful approaches that would enhance care of each individual patient and overcome the routine and customary care that often is occurring. The readers may easily grasp what changes in structure and behavior are critical to the delivery of effective individual care. The way the various authors of each of the chapters present their individual insights is certain to leave the reader, no matter of which healthcare discipline, to want to innovate and make the best approach possible for each individual patient and thus promote a more certain return to good health. This may be one of the most stimulating texts, written on this subject. It is a strong guide to modifying the care structure for those dedicated to enriching the total healthcare structure and it can be shared with others when attempting to change any care structure.