Final answer:
An adverse event in healthcare is a failure to follow established procedures or treatment prescriptions that results in patient harm or death.
Step-by-step explanation:
An adverse event is defined as any time there is failure to follow established procedures, treatment prescriptions, or an event that causes patient injury or death. Within the healthcare field, occurrences like this raise complex questions about liability and responsibility.
Examples include situations where hospitals or health-care workers may not have deviated from standard procedures, yet those procedures themselves could be flawed. Additionally, there might be occasions where life-saving medical equipment fails or is found defective, prompting debates around manufacturer liability.
Other scenarios exemplify the potential risks, such as a safety engineer identifying that a significant proportion of industrial accidents are due to noncompliance with instructions, or the spread of iatrogenic diseases due to human errors during medical procedures.