Introduction:

Error is present in any human activity; the medical practice is not an exception. Due to an increase in knowledge about health and diseases, error possibility related to disease management is decreasing, but has not been totally eliminated.

Objective:

To expose the authors' experiences regarding error in medical practice.

Methods:

A bibliographic review was carried out, covering the years between 2000 and 2020. Validated bibliographic sources were located and consulted in Medline, PubMed and SciELO, accessed through the Virtual Health Library. The following keywords were used for the search: error médico [medical error], iatrogenia [iatrogenic error], responsabilidad penal del médico [physician criminal liability] and método clínico [clinical method]. Three previous bibliographies considered useful for the article and three book chapters with related topics were also reviewed, in addition to the resolutions of the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba dealing with the topic of medical error. Finally, 21 bibliographies in Spanish and English were selected.

Conclusions:

There are great possibilities of errors in the process of patient diagnosis and management. The development of technology, as well as the improvement in the construction of guides and protocols, decreases the probabilities of errors, but do not eliminate them. The improvement in the training of human resources, together with the correct use of the clinical method, is an effective strategy to reduce errors in medical practice.

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