Results of a joint meeting between national advisory councils in medicine and nursing on physician-nurse collaboration to enhance patient safety are reported. Recommendations on which participants reached consensus are organized by these Institute of Medicine (IOM) themes: establish a national focus to create leadership through research and protocols to enhance the knowledge base about safety; identify and learn from errors through immediate, strong mandatory reporting efforts; raise standards and expectations for improvements in safety; and create safety systems inside health care organizations through implementation of safe practices at the delivery level. A summary of collaborative activities follows. The issues as outlined by speakers at the meeting are organized by IOM themes. Seven manuscripts are "Putting Patients First: Improving Patient Safety Through Collaborative Education" (Wakefield); "Managing Error for System Improvement" (Kaplan, Battles); "Preventing Patient Injuries" (James); "Collaborative Education to Improve Public Safety" (Conway-Welch); "Learning to Improve Complex Systems of Care" (Headrick); "Using Clinical Computing to Enhance Physician and Nurse Collaboration and to Improve Patient Safety" (Gardner); and "Collaborative Education to Improve Public Safety" (Swankin). Three annotated bibliographies are appended: nurse-physician collaboration in practice (71 items); interdisciplinary (interprofessional) education (88); and medical errors and error prevention (79). (YLB)