Adverse event is an injury to a client caused by medical management rather than a client's underlying condition. It may or may not be preventable. The Institute of Medicine (2000) recognizes 4 types of errors. They are:

• Diagnostic (delay in diagnosis, failure to employ indicated tests, failure to act on results of monitoring)
• Treatment (error in performance of procedure, treatment, dose; avoidable delay)
• Preventive (failure to provide prophylactic treatment, inadequate follow-up/monitoring of treatment)
• Other (failure of communication, equipment failure, system failure)

Option 4 is a fall, although the mechanism probably results in a lesser chance of serious injury. The risk fall assessment should be adjusted.

Option 5 is an avoidable delay in application of a test, which will affect timely diagnosis. The nurse should advocate for a more timely completion of the test.

Option 2 is a failure to provide appropriate treatment and has a direct correlation for worsening cellulitis.

(Option 1) Failure to complete an ideal nursing care plan is not an adverse event. Hospitals have policies that allow medications to be given within a range (usually 30-60 minutes) of the due time. It could be an issue if the treatment was significantly out of the time range or omitted completely.

(Option 3) The client's seizure is most likely related to an underlying condition rather than a medical management error.

Educational objective:
Adverse events cause injury that is related to medical management, not the client's underlying condition. Identified areas are diagnostic, treatment, preventive or failure of communication, and equipment or other systems. Adverse events include falls, unreasonable delay in diagnostic tests, and failure to provide a prescribed treatment