Book excerpt: Medical errors kill 14,000 people in Canada each year, adversely affect hundreds of thousands and cost close to two billion dollars. But this is not a situation unique to Canada. The NHS frequently comes under fire for misdiagnoses or for completely ignoring patients with fatal symptoms. After The Error is a collection of true stories, and it is the first book anywhere to recognise what patients affected by medical errors, their families and immediate healthcare providers have done to prevent others from enduring similar experiences.