SOURCES OF ERROR IN EMERGENCY ULTRASONOGRAPHY Running head: ULTRASONOGRAPHY

Medication errors are the most common errors in healthcare systems across the world wherein administration errors, dispensing errors, and prescribing errors. Among these, the patients are mostly affected by diagnosing errors, which are mostly identified in radiology. According to the Institute of Medicine, an error is defined as the failure of any planned action for completing as intended initially, or utilizing any wrong plan for achieving an aim. The identified errors in medical imaging have been observed as early as 1959 wherein the surprising degrees of errors 50 years ago have since remained unchanged and persistent. Currently, ultrasonography has become a significant diagnostic tool for an enhanced number as well as a range of clinical conditions where the detection of abdominal masses or evaluation of traumatic abdominal conditions has become commonplace (Pinto et al. 2016). Emergency ultrasonography has unfortunately become quite susceptible to errors where misinterpretation of sonographic images is considered a severe risk in clinical diagnosis.