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Safe Practices for Better Healthcare—2010 Update. Classic icon
National Quality Forum. Washington, DC: National Quality Forum; 2010.

The National Quality Forum originally published the Safe Practices for Better Healthcare in 2003. These practices are intended to be universally applicable, "gold standard" interventions for reducing preventable harm, and have been widely endorsed and implemented. As in the 2009 update, the 34 specific practices are organized into seven content areas: creating a culture of safety, providing patient-centered care and disclosing errors, matching health care needs with delivery capacity, facilitating information transfer and clear communication between providers, managing medications safely, preventing health care–associated infections, and implementing safe practices for specific clinical conditions and sites of care. There are no major changes in the recommended practices since 2009, but the report contains specific recommendations on engaging patients and families in safety efforts.

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