Table 2.

Nominal error rates of activities in healthcare (after Berwick and Nolan [17])

Task	Nominal error rate
Error of commission, e.g. misreading label	0.003
Simple arithmetic errors with self checking	0.03
Error of omission without reminders	0.01
Inspector fails to recognize an error	0.1
Error rate under very high stress when dangerous activities are occurring rapidly	0.25