After several decades of experience in medicine, with surgery as a speciality, I try to transmit this experience to new generations and, if possible, to future generations, trying to make them understand that patient safety is the safety of the doctor and of the health system in general.That error is a distinctive human trait, which has always been and is used as a penalty and a shame; today the paradigm of patient safety makes it a source of learning to avoid it or mitigate its consequences, and that it serves from the individual to the collective as an engine of management in state health policies.