Perspectives
Our Perspectives on Safety section features expert viewpoints on current themes in patient safety, including interviews and written essays published monthly. Annual Perspectives highlight vital and emerging patient safety topics.
Latest Perspectives
This piece focuses on the importance of patient safety following the end of the public health emergency and how organizations can move beyond the pandemic.
This piece focuses on the importance of patient safety following the end of the public health emergency and how organizations can move beyond the pandemic.
Editor’s note: Kathleen Sanford is the chief nursing officer and an executive vice president at CommonSpirit. Sue Schuelke is an assistant professor at the College of Nursing–Lincoln Division, University of Nebraska... Read More
This piece discusses virtual nursing, an approach to care that incorporates an advanced practice nurse into hospital-based patient care through telehealth. Virtual nursing increases patient safety and may enable expert nurses to... Read More
This piece focuses on the importance of building the capacity of the workforce and organizations for patient safety using patient safety education.
All Perspectives (8)
This piece discusses patient safety challenges that arose as a result of the unique care circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Patient Safety Organizations (PSOs) are organizations dedicated to improving patient safety and healthcare quality that serve to collect and analyze data voluntarily reported by healthcare providers to promote learning. Federal confidentiality and privilege protections apply to certain information (defined as “patient safety work product”) developed when a healthcare provider works with a federally listed PSO under the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 and its implementing regulation. AHRQ is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the PSO listing process. Based on their presentations at an AHRQ annual meeting, we spoke with representatives from two PSOs, Poonam Sharma, MD, MPH, the Senior Clinical Data Analyst at Atrium Health, and Rhonda Dickman, MSN, RN, CPHQ, the Director of the Tennessee Hospital Association PSO about how the unique circumstances surrounding care during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted patient safety risks in both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients.