The CARE approach to reducing diagnostic errors.

BACKGROUND: Diagnostic errors appear to be the most common, costly, and dangerous of all medical mistakes. There has been a notable increase on the focus of error prevention as part of a growing patient safety movement. However, diagnostic errors have received less attention than other types of error. Our goal is to present a short mnemonic that can act as a checklist or posted reminder to help practitioners in dermatology or any field of medicine to avoid diagnostic errors.

METHODS: To meet this goal, the authors reviewed the literature and discussed errors and potential errors they have experienced over 55 years of combined practice, to create a short mnemonic.

RESULTS: The CARE method has helped the authors prepare and review their differential diagnoses in the relatively fast-paced practice of dermatology, but it has yet to be tested on a large scale.

CONCLUSION: The CARE (communicate, assess for biased reasoning, reconsider differential diagnoses, enact a plan) method is an efficient, recallable checklist that uses an educational approach to reduce diagnostic error while reminding us to simply "care" from a humanistic perspective. This method may help reduce preventable diagnostic errors and improve patient care.