Classics and Emerging Classics

Uncertainty in complex care situations is a common experience for both trainees and experienced practitioners. This review explores the concept of comfort with uncertainty in medicine and suggests that individual awareness of uncertainty is required to respond to the condition as it occurs. The authors advocate for educational and research strategies to further manage uncertainty in health care.

Reducing opioid-related harm is a major patient safety priority. This simulation study used a mathematical model to predict the effect of existing opioid misuse interventions on opioid overdose mortality. The researchers compared the expected decline based on the current trend over time versus the effect of a 50% faster reduction in misuse. Their calculations suggest that interventions such as prescription drug monitoring programs and insurance coverage changes will result in only a small absolute decrease in opioid overdose deaths. The authors call for developing and testing other strategies for opioid safety. An Annual Perspective discussed the extent of harm associated with opioid prescribing and described promising practices to address opioid misuse.

Drawing on information gathered from the ISMP Medication Errors Reporting Program, this fact sheet provides a comprehensive list of commonly confused medication names, including look-alike and sound-alike name pairs. Drug name confusion can easily lead to medication errors, and the ISMP has recommended interventions such as the use of tall man lettering in order to prevent such errors. An error due to sound-alike medications is discussed in this AHRQ WebM&M commentary.

Surgical fires, though uncommon, can result in serious harm. This review highlights three components to be managed in the operating room to prevent fires: an oxidizer, an ignition source, and a fuel. The authors provide recommendations to ensure each element is handled safely.

Reducing opioid-related overdoses and deaths is a national patient safety priority. Little is known as to the extent to which direct-to-provider marketing of opioids by pharmaceutical companies influences physician prescribing and patient mortality related to overdose from prescription opioids. In this study, researchers analyzed data from both the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments database and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on opioid prescribing and fatal overdoses at the county level within the United States from August 2014 through December 2016. They linked this to pharmaceutical company marketing data from August 2013 to December 2015. Using the Open Payments database, they found that there were 434,754 payments related to opioid marketing made to 67,507 providers across 2,208 counties accounting for almost $40 million. Further analysis revealed that marketing to providers was associated with increased prescribing of opioids and mortality from opioid overdoses. An accompany commentary concludes that numerous approaches will be necessary to effectively mitigate the opioid epidemic.

Prescribing unnecessary antibiotics increases the risk of resistant infections and can lead to patient harm. In this cross-sectional study, researchers found that 23% of the 15,455,834 outpatient antibiotic prescriptions filled among a cohort of 19.2 million patients over a 1-year period were consistent with inappropriate prescribing.

Deprescribing or stopping unnecessary medications is an important strategy for reducing medication-related harm in older adults. A group of 1981 Medicare beneficiaries reported broad support (92%) for stopping at least one of their medications if their clinician determined it was safe. A WebM&M commentary provides in-depth recommendations to achieve safe prescribing in older patients.

Patient engagement in safety takes many forms: patients may report unique safety incidents, encourage adherence to best medical practice, and coproduce improvement initiatives. Family-centered rounding in pediatrics invites families to express concerns, clarify information, and provide real-time input to the health care team. This pre–post study explored the safety impact of Patient and Family Centered (PFC) I-PASS rounds on 3106 admissions in pediatric units at 7 hospitals. Family-centered rounds reduced both preventable and nonpreventable adverse events. They also improved family experience without substantially lengthening rounding time. A past PSNet interview discussed the safety benefits of structured communication between health care providers and family members.

Missed nursing care has been linked to safety problems, but ensuring reliable levels of nurse staffing remains challenging. This report provides the results of a 3-year investigation into whether tracking of vital signs by nursing staff could serve as a viable measure for safe patient coverage. The report identified correlations between low staffing, missed vital sign observation, length of stay, and likelihood of mortality. However, record review found no direct relationship between safety and staffing levels. A PSNet perspective examined the relationship between missed nursing care and patient safety.

Diagnostic errors and delays may occur when patients fail to disclose medically relevant information. This study analyzed online survey responses from 4510 patients and found that about 70% reported not disclosing information. Disagreement with a clinician's recommendation or failure to understand a clinician's instructions were common. Patients most often did not disclose because they feared judgment from the clinician or felt embarrassed.

Clinician burnout has been associated with decreased job satisfaction. Burnout may also be detrimental to patient safety. This systematic review and meta-analysis found high rates of burnout among mental health professionals. The authors recommend strategies to address burnout including promoting professional autonomy, developing teamwork, and providing quality clinical supervision.

Elderly patients are at greater risk of experiencing adverse drug events than the adult population as a whole. Older patients are more likely to be frail, have more medical conditions, and are physiologically more sensitive to injury from certain classes of medication. Researchers examined a large cohort of Irish outpatients age 65 and older to determine the relationship between hospital discharge and potentially inappropriate medication prescribing. Approximately half of the 38,229 patients studied were prescribed a medication in contravention to the STOPP criteria. The risk of potentially inappropriate prescribing increased after hospital discharge, even when using multiple statistical techniques to control for medical complexity. An accompanying editorial delineates various vulnerabilities that predispose older patients to adverse events during the transition from hospital to home. A recent PSNet perspective discussed community pharmacists' role in promoting medication safety.

Patient and family engagement can enhance both individual safety and organizational improvement efforts. This position paper advocates for patients and families to be active partners in all aspects of their care, treated with respect and dignity, engaged in improving health care systems, and directly involved in education of health care professionals. The piece also provides strategies to employ these recommendations in the daily practice.

System and process weaknesses can hinder safe patient care. This commentary raises awareness of human factors engineering as a key opportunity for enhancing patient safety. The authors provide recommendations to drive adoption and spread of human factors strategies through targeted education, clinician–engineer partnerships, and coordinated improvement efforts.

Psychological safety is foundational to sharing ideas, reporting errors, and raising concerns. This book provides a framework for leaders to develop psychological safety in their organization. The author argues that it is imperative to facilitate an environment that enables staff to freely exhibit the candor, comfort, and openness needed to sustain high performance and innovation.

Patient and family engagement efforts can affect health care quality and safety. This review examined the research on patient engagement efforts and found evidence of robust examinations of patient engagement related to patient self-management of anticoagulation medications. However, there was mixed-quality evidence on patient involvement in medication administration errors, documentation and scheduling accuracy, hospital readmissions, and health care–associated infections. They recommend areas of research needed to guide the application of patient engagement strategies.

Although health information technology has been shown to improve patient safety, problems with implementation and user interface design persist. Unintended consequences associated with the use of electronic health record (EHR) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems remain a safety concern. Pediatric patients may be particularly vulnerable to medication errors associated with EHR usability. Researchers examined 9000 safety event reports over a 5-year period from 3 pediatric health care facilities and found that 5079 events were related to the EHR and medication. Of these, 3243 identified EHR usability as contributing to the event, 609 of which reached the patient. Incorrect dosing was the most common medication error detected across the three facilities. A previous WebM&M commentary highlighted the unintended consequences of CPOE.

An unintentionally retained foreign object during a surgery or a procedure is considered a never event and can result in significant patient harm. Researchers retrospectively reviewed 308 events involving unintentionally retained foreign objects that were reported to The Joint Commission to better characterize these events, determine the impact on the patient, identify contributing factors, and make recommendations for improving safety.

Prior research suggests that improved nursing resources may be associated with decreased mortality and adverse events. However, less is known about how changes to nursing resources in the inpatient setting may affect quality and safety over time. In this study involving 737 hospitals and survey data from nurses obtained in 2006 and 2016, researchers found that after adjusting for numerous factors, better nursing resources in terms of work environment, staffing, and education was associated with improvement in quality and patient safety outcomes. A PSNet perspective discussed the impact of nursing resources on patient safety.

Artificial intelligence can improve practice by making synthesized data available in real time to inform frontline decision-making. This commentary describes factors clinicians should consider as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in health care and discusses how this technology can enable clinicians to focus on helping patients navigate complex care choices.