Systemic patterns of patient safety events in radiology: when, where, and why things go wrong.

Patient care failures are multifactorial in nature and require systemic examination to identify contributing factors and design effective solutions. This single-institution retrospective event analysis of reported safety events finds that radiology accounted for 3.2% of events and that radiologists were involved in 9.3% of the events, mainly in diagnostic and procedural actions. Medication and contrast administration was the highest-risk category, with pediatric and older adult patients disproportionately affected, underscoring the need for standardized, system-level quality review.