The well-being of healthcare workers is essential to the delivery of high quality, safe care. This article proposes a definition of “avoidable employee harm” (e.g., retaliation for speaking up about safety concerns) and describes how prioritizing organizational safety culture can increase both employee and patient safety.

Health care organizations frequently join collaboratives to address numerous quality and safety challenges. Examining the evidence regarding the effectiveness of such collaboratives, this systematic review concluded that although the studies generally reported improvements in processes of care and clinical outcomes, less than one-third of the studies included met specific design characteristics.

This publication compared the use of the Global Trigger Tool with a two-stage retrospective review process to design a method to monitor health care–associated harm in Welsh National Health Service hospitals. Analyzing results from 11 of the 13 system hospitals, investigators determined that a hybrid incident review approach that does not rely on physician involvement can return reliable data.

This study examined how a quality improvement effort was communicated to frontline health care workers and found that structured communication enhanced awareness and knowledge of the planned safety intervention. The authors recommend that patient safety programs incorporate structured communication to frontline staff, but they suggest further study of its effects on safety culture is needed.

A systematic review using failure mode effects analysis methodology defined vulnerabilities in medication management in primary care.