When you’re admitted to a hospital, you expect your health to improve. But that’s often not what happens: It has been estimated that up to 440,000 Americans die each year after experiencing a hospital-­based medical mistake. That makes those errors the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., behind heart disease and cancer.

What’s more, every year an estimated 722,000 people in the U.S. develop infections during a hospital stay, and about 75,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Whether a death is due to a patient being given the wrong drug or developing an infection because a doctor failed to wash his or her hands, many are preventable. Here’s what you need to know about five all-too-common medical mistakes:

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