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
Throughout 2022, AHRQ PSNet has shared research that elucidates the complex nature of misdiagnosis and diagnostic safety. This Year in Review explores recent work in diagnostic safety and ways that greater safety may be promoted using tools developed to... Read More
Drs. Susan McGrath and George Blike discuss surveillance monitoring and its challenges and opportunities.
This piece discusses surveillance monitoring of patients in low-acuity units of the hospital to prevent failure to rescue events, its difference from high-acuity continuous monitoring, and its potential applications in... Read More
In the past several decades, technological advances have opened new possibilities for improving patient safety. Using technology to digitize healthcare processes has the potential to increase standardization and efficiency of clinical workflows and... Read More
This piece focuses on perinatal mental health and efforts to improve maternal safety.
Christie Allen is the Senior Director of Quality Improvement at the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG). We spoke to her about her experience in maternal safety and improving perinatal mental... Read More
All Perspectives (1)
This piece discusses the role that media plays in affecting patient safety.
Michael L. Millenson is the President of Health Quality Advisors LLC, author of the critically acclaimed book Demanding Medical Excellence: Doctors and Accountability in the Information Age, and an adjunct associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He serves on the Board of Directors for Project Patient Care, and earlier in his career he was a healthcare reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he was nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize. We spoke with him about how patient safety efforts are shaped by the media and how the role of media has changed since our original discussion on the role of media in patient safety (published in October of 2009 (https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/conversation-charles-ornstein; https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/media-essential-if-sometimes-arbitrary-promoter-patient-safety)).