Handshake antimicrobial stewardship as a model to recognize and prevent diagnostic errors.
This study leveraged “Great Catches” as part of an existing handshake antimicrobial stewardship program (HS-ASP) to identify potential diagnostic errors. Using a validated tool, researchers found that 12% of “Great Catch” cases involved diagnostic error. These cases included a diagnostic recommendation from the HS-ASP team (e.g., recommendations to consider alternative diagnoses, request additional testing, or additional interpretation of laboratory results). As these diagnostic recommendations often flagged diagnostic errors, this suggests that the HS-ASP model can be leveraged to identify and intervene on diagnostic errors in real time.