The quality and culture of the health care work environment is known to affect care delivery. This commentary discusses human-centered and participatory design approaches as avenues for developing improvements in clinician well-being that will enhance safety for staff, providers, and patients.

Safe prescribing dictates that prescriptions should only be written for the patients who are intended to use the prescribed medications. Using claims data, this analysis identified a high rate of opioid prescriptions written for and filled by the spouses of patients undergoing outpatient surgery (who may be unable to fill prescriptions themselves after surgery). Findings suggest intentional, clinically inappropriate prescribing of opioids.

Physician fatigue can inhibit decision-making and contribute to poor performance. This cross-sectional study examined surgical procedures performed between January 2010 and August 2020 across 20 high-volume hospitals in the United States to determine the association between surgeon fatigue, operating overnight and outcomes for operations performed by the same surgeon the next day. No significant associations were found between overnight surgeries and surgical outcomes for procedures performed the next day.

… to communicate important information which introduces a patient safety risk .  One healthcare system searched … D, Hallisey RK, et al. Improving allergy documentation: a retrospective electronic health record system-wide patient …

The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in the use of telehealth in order to limit patient exposure to the virus. Findings from this study highlight the value of telehealth visits for patients with suspected respiratory infections to prevent further transmission. Researchers found that patients exposed to influenza-like illness in primary care office settings were more likely than nonexposed patients to return with a similar illness within two weeks.

Adolescent patients transitioning from pediatric to adult medicine may experience patient safety risks. Using a large commercial insurance claims database, the authors compared opioid prescribing patterns and risk for opioid-related adverse events (overdose, opioid use disorder, or long-term use) among adolescents transitioning from “child” to “adult” at 18 years of age. The authors estimate a 14% increased risk for an opioid-related adverse outcome within one year when “adults” just over age 18 years were prescribed opioids that would not have been prescribed if they were under 18 years and considered “children.” The authors discuss how systematic differences in how pediatric and adult patients may be treated can lead to differences in opioid prescribing.

In this editorial, patient safety experts discuss threats to healthcare safety and quality due to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., failures in infection prevention and control, diagnostic errors, issues with laboratory testing) and highlight positive changes and opportunities, such as improved care coordination, supply chain innovations, accelerated learning, expansion of telemedicine, and prioritizing the safety and well-being of health care workers.

This article discusses the state of the evidence on apology laws and methodological limitations which may impair researchers’ ability to assess reductions in liability attributable to these laws. 

This study reviewed medical malpractice claims spanning a 10-year period involving deaths related to inpatient care. Two physicians completed a blinded review of the claim to determine whether there was major, minor or no discordance between the final clinical diagnoses and the pathological diagnoses ascertained at autopsy. The researchers found that 31% of claims demonstrated major discordance between autopsy and clinical findings. The most common diagnoses newly discovered on autopsy were infection or sepsis, pulmonary or air embolus, and coronary atherosclerosis. In addition, the researchers found that performing an autopsy was not associated with either the likelihood of payout on a malpractice or the median size of that payout. They conclude that physicians should not hesitate to advocate for autopsies to investigate unexpected in-hospital deaths.

… institutional leadership support including oversight by a full-time project manager, investments in physician … MM, Roche S, Greenberg Y, Folcarelli PH, Van Niel MB, Kachalia A. Ensuring successful implementation of …

A lack of closed-loop feedback systems has been identified as one contributor to underreporting of patient safety events. This paper describes one large academic medical center’s implementation of a Feedback to Reporter program in ambulatory care, which aimed to ensure feedback on safety reports is provided to reporting staff by managers. At baseline, 50% of staff who requested feedback ultimately received it; after three years, the rate of feedback to reporters had increased to 90%.

This paper discusses the implementation of a hospital-wide, automated electronic reporting system that was intended to capture real-time data about patient deaths and allows the front-line physicians and nurses to review incident data. Over a 7-year period, 91% of deaths resulted in a review, and 5% were considered preventable by the front-line clinicians. The retrospective study identified potential systems-level changes to improve care delivery and patient safety, particularly around communication, end of life care, and interhospital transfers.

In 2003, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education limited resident physician work hours to 30 hours in 1 shift and 80 hours in 1 week. These duty hour reforms were intended to enhance patient safety and trainee physician well-being. However, some have expressed concern that physicians who train for fewer hours will leave residency less skilled and ultimately provide lower quality care. Investigators assessed whether attending internists who trained with duty hour restrictions differed after residency in terms of their Medicare patients' mortality, readmissions, or costs when compared with internists who trained with unlimited duty hours. They found no difference in quality or cost between the two physician groups. Although other studies have concluded that duty hours have not adversely affected clinical or safety outcomes in residency, this study extends that finding to physicians' subsequent practice. Duty hour restrictions have consistently been associated with improved resident physician well-being. A PSNet perspective reviewed changes to the ACGME requirements to create flexibility for work hours within the maximum 80-hour workweek.

This retrospective review of nearly 900 incident reports related to diagnostic imaging found that the most common type of safety problem was linked to the imaging procedure. Events associated with communicating abnormal results were less common but had a higher potential to harm patients. Most events had multiple contributing factors.

Outpatient safety is gaining recognition as a focus of research and improvement efforts. This project report describes an ambulatory safety program at an academic health system that targeted reporting, safety culture measurement, medication safety, and test result management. Repeated tracking over a 5-year period revealed that failure to request feedback played a role in the modest incident and concern reporting captured by the program. Decentralizing reporting response responsibilities throughout the system significantly increased feedback activity.

Malpractice claims can shed light on patient safety hazards. This observational study examined how paid malpractice claims affected physicians' practice. Investigators found that a small proportion of physicians, about 10%, had one or more paid malpractice claims, consistent with prior studies. Approximately 2% of physicians accounted for nearly 40% of paid claims. Physicians with paid claims were more likely to leave clinical practice and more likely to move to smaller practice settings. The authors raise the concern that physicians who move to smaller practice settings may lack the institutional and peer support to remediate their clinical skills and behavior. A PSNet perspective explored the risk of recurring medicolegal events among providers who have received multiple malpractice claims.

Scheduling overlapping surgeries has raised substantial patient safety concerns. However, research regarding the impact of concurrent surgery on patient outcomes has produced conflicting results. In this multicenter retrospective cohort study, researchers examined the relationship between overlapping surgery and mortality, postoperative complications, and surgery duration for 66,430 surgeries between January 2010 and May 2018. Although overlapping surgery was not significantly associated with an increase in mortality or complications overall, researchers did find a significant association between overlapping surgery and increased length of surgery. An accompanying editorial discusses the role of overlapping surgery in promoting the autonomy of those in surgical training and suggests that further research is needed to settle the debate regarding the impact of overlapping surgery on patient safety.

… respond to serious errors and adverse events. Rather than a deny-or-defend strategy, CRPs facilitate full error … have had great success with CRPs and most see them as a morally wise approach to errors. However, concerns that … Communication-and-resolution programs had either a positive or neutral effect on all metrics including new …

Multidisciplinary organizational efforts are necessary to reduce inappropriate prescribing of opioids. This commentary describes the design and implementation of an opioid stewardship program that combined the use of technology, education, and clinical strategies under strong leadership guidance as a cross-disciplinary strategy to address opioid misuse.

As the diagnostic safety field has matured, researchers are striving to better define the diagnostic process and identify failure modes that may lead to patient harm. This study utilized human factors engineering approaches to characterize the information sources used in radiologic diagnostic imaging according to the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) framework. Most potential errors were related to person-related factors, such as inadequate communication between clinicians, rather than technological factors.