EDITORIAL article
Front. Med.
Sec. Regulatory Science
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1676522
This article is part of the Research TopicErrors and Biases in Modern Healthcare: Public Health, Medico-legal and Risk Management AspectsView all 10 articles
Editorial: Errors and Biases in Modern Healthcare: Public Health, Medico-legal and Risk Management Aspects
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Health Sciences, Section of Forensic Medical Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
- 2Universita degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italy
- 3Universita degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
- 4Universita Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome, Italy
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indicating that the patient blames specific professionals rather than the (impersonal) institution for the events (14). Visci et al. focused on a topic of upmost relevance: can the knowledge on the causal processes related to medical errors developed by the experts in legal medicine be used to improve clinical services? Their observations study concluded that structured forensic consultation services should be incorporated into clinical practice, being able to professionally and timely address hot topics like capacity for consent that are frequent issues that can "paralyze" the hospital activities (15). Refolo et al. analyzed another face of the term "risk": the risk of aggressive behavior based on genetic predisposition (16). Aggressivity is an issue of public interest both in hospital and common social contexts, and the potential role of genes in risk profiling has a potential dual use that should lead to strong ethical barriers (16). Finally, Aurilio et al. discussed the birthrelated long bone fractures in healthy newborns, an example of an adverse event that can be both due to unavoidable factors and to human errors, with the compliance with best practices and prevention policies being cornerstone of medico-legal defense (17). In conclusion, in medicine there is no such thing as a rigid dichotomic difference between errors and proper conducts, but there is a risk density entangled with medical services that can be addressed/neglected, inflated/deflated, defined/left unknown. Hunting for manipulable variables in the unknown and improving the management of the risks are the real keywords of the papers of this special issue. To err is not only human anymore, but only humans can envision the future in healthcare and tailor new strategies to make it safe for all the stakeholders. All the authors contributed equally.
Keywords: Risk Management, legal medicine, medical error, medical bias, Medical malpractice
Received: 30 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Grassi, Ausania, Ferorelli and De Micco. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Simone Grassi, Department of Health Sciences, Section of Forensic Medical Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
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