Fatigue among health care workers represents a significant patient safety concern. This study describes the development of guidelines to reduce fatigue and its associated risks among emergency medical services personnel.

The impact of fatigue on clinician performance is a concern across health care settings. This study explained how researchers developed key questions to help assess fatigue in prehospital emergency medical services. They describe a plan to conduct systematic reviews to inform future guidelines.

High-quality error investigation can pave the way for safety improvement. This survey of community pharmacists found that a blame-free culture promotes learning from error investigation, but work stress impedes safety culture. The authors suggest that working conditions and safety culture should be addressed in order to improve safety in community pharmacies.

… need for strategies to enhance medication safety . … Lang A, Macdonald M, Marck P, et al. Seniors managing multiple medications: using …

This qualitative study of palliative care recipients, family caregivers, and paid home health staff found that they conceive of safety as encompassing emotional as well as functional safety, and they accept some risk in order to remain in the home environment. This work emphasizes the need for setting-specific patient engagement to tailor safety efforts.

Prior research has found that adverse drug events are a common source of emergency department (ED) visits and hospital admissions in adults. This prospective observational study involved more than 2000 pediatric patients presenting to an ED at a tertiary academic medical center in Canada. Medications were directly related to the presenting chief complaint in 8% of patients, with two-thirds of these deemed preventable. The vast majority of medication-related visits were classified as causing moderate harm, but approximately 5% of cases were severe. Children with a medication-related ED visit were much more likely to be admitted to the hospital and to have a longer length of stay than children presenting to the ED with other problems. The results of this study add to a prior systematic review by the same research group, which also found that a significant proportion of adverse drug events in pediatric patients presenting to the ED were likely avoidable.

This qualitative study found that nurses and patients perceive patient safety as a shared responsibility. Both nurses and patients identified provider stress and workload as barriers to engaging patients in safety, consistent with prior studies.

This qualitative study characterized inpatients' roles in taking medications from both the patient and nursing perspectives. Researchers found significant barriers to engaging patients in medication administration including inpatients' mental status and nurses' time limitations. Previous recommendations to engage patients in their own care have not addressed these factors.

… Journal of pharmacy practice … J Pharm Pract … This analysis of community pharmacy practices …

Adverse events are thought to be common in patients receiving home health care, but few high-quality studies address this issue. This prospective cohort study found that 1 in 10 home care patients experienced an adverse event each year, and more than half of these events were considered preventable.

… The Journal of pediatrics … J Pediatr … This systematic review of medication-related …

This study found that the World Health Organization's International Classification for Patient Safety generally applies to the home care setting, but it overlooks some critical aspects of safety that are unique to this environment.

… J Am Pharm Assoc (2003) … Pharmacists in Canadian community …

Underutilization of voluntary error reporting systems can result in a skewed picture of patient safety. This focus group study explored reasons why pharmacists, nurses, and physicians do not voluntarily report medication errors and identified specific barriers to error reporting.

… Journal of advanced nursing … J Adv Nurs … This systematic review of methods to reduce …

This study used routinely collected electronic data to uncover information about adverse events not easily captured through other mechanisms.

Expanding on the "5 rights" concept, this commentary describes how organizations can incorporate a patient-centered perspective to improve the safety of medication delivery.

… are common. This article details one teaching hospital's interdisciplinary approach to selecting a PCA device to …