Leadership across all levels of a health system plays an important role in patient safety. In this study, researchers administered the Safety, Communication, Operational, Reliability, and Engagement (SCORE) survey to 31 Midwestern hospitals to evaluate how leadership behaviors influenced burnout, safety culture, and engagement. Findings indicate that local leadership behaviors are strongly associated with healthcare worker burnout, safety climate, teamwork climate, workload, and intentions to leave the job.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased symptoms of physician burnout, including emotional exhaustion, which can increase patient safety risks. This cross-sectional study examined emotional exhaustion among healthcare workers at two large health care systems in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Respondents reported increases in emotional exhaustion in themselves and perceived exhaustion experienced by their colleagues. The researchers found that emotional exhaustion was often clustered in work settings, highlighting the importance of organizational climate and safety culture in mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on healthcare worker well-being.

… J Patient Saf. … Psychological safety (PS) is integral to … among those exposed to institutional PS programs (i.e., Safety WalkRounds and Positive Leadership WalkRounds ). … … metric for the ability to speak up in healthcare settings. J Patient Saf. 2022;18(6):513-520. …

Teamwork is an essential component of patient safety.  This cross-sectional study of 50,000 healthcare workers in four large US health systems found that the teamwork climate worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey findings indicate that healthcare facilities with worsening teamwork climate had corresponding decreases in other measured domains, including safety climate and healthcare worker well-being. The researchers suggest that healthcare organizations should proactively increase team-based training to reduce patient harm.

… J Patient Saf … Adverse event reporting by health care … care, diagnosis, and care delays. … Cohen SP, McLean HS, Milne J, et al. Differences in safety report event types submitted …

… Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf … Safety WalkRounds involve health care … climate nine-months after implementation.   … Klimmeck S, Sexton BJ, Schwendimann R. Changes in safety and teamwork … observations to patient safety WalkRounds. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. Epub 2021 Sep 8. …

… Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf … Health system leadership practices can …

High levels of healthcare worker (HCW) burnout may be associated with lower levels of patient safety and quality. In June 2020, three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, 288 maternity and neonatal HCWs were asked about their perspectives on well-being and patient safety. Two-thirds of respondents reported symptoms of burnout and only one-third reported adequate organizational support to meet these challenges. Organizations are encouraged to implement programs to reduce burnout and support HCW well-being.

… Jt Comm J Qual Saf … Healthcare workers may experience distress … highlighting the importance of support programs . … Sexton JB, Adair KC, Profit J, et al. Perceptions of institutional support for “second …

… Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf … Jt Comm J Qual Saf … This study used a brief survey to evaluate …

Prior research has found that perceptions about safety climate varies across neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). This large cross-sectional study examining the impact of caregiver perceptions of safety climate on clinical outcomes found that stronger safety climates were associated with lower risk of healthcare-associated infections, but climate did not affect mortality rates.

Medical errors are a concern across the economic spectrum worldwide. This commentary describes an educational effort to develop champions to lead patient safety, quality improvement, and infection control initiatives in health systems in low- and middle-income countries. The authors highlight the importance of contextualizing training to consider local needs and resources.

Prior research has shown that health care worker perceptions of safety culture may vary across different neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Less is known as to how perceptions of NICU safety culture relate to NICU quality of care. In this cross-sectional study involving 44 NICUs, researchers found a significant relationship between safety climate and teamwork ratings and a lack of health care–associated infections, but no relationship with regard to the other performance metrics examined in the study.

… J Grad Med Educ … J Gen Intern Care … Voluntary reporting of safety events is a …

Burnout is a highly prevalent patient safety issue. This survey study examined work–life balance and burnout. Researchers validated a novel survey measure for work–life balance by asking participants to report behaviors like skipping meals and working without breaks. Residents, fellows, and attending physicians reported the lowest work–life balance, and psychologists, nutritionists, and environmental services workers reported the highest work–life balance. Time of day and shift length also influenced work–life balance: day shift had better scores compared to night shift, and shorter shifts had better scores than longer shifts. The work–life balance score also clustered by the work setting: individuals with different roles within a given setting (such as the intensive care unit, the emergency department, or the clinical laboratory) had more similar work–life balance. Those with higher work–life balance reported better safety culture and less burnout. The authors suggest that burnout interventions target work settings rather than individuals, because work–life balance seems to function as a shared experience within health care settings.

Improving safety culture is an organizational challenge. This quality improvement study describes a partnership in which a large privately owned group of hospitals, postacute facilities, and outpatient clinics partnered with an academic health system to enhance safety culture and metrics. The program included an assessment of the quality at each site followed by an individual improvement plan. Each site embarked on a multimodal intervention that included leadership engagement, team training, audit and feedback, and traditional quality improvement strategies such as Plan–Do–Study–Act cycles. The authors report significant improvements across measures of patient safety such as health care–associated infections and readmissions.

Emergency departments harbor conditions that can hinder safe medication administration for pediatric patients. This policy statement identifies and prioritizes improvements such as implementing kilogram-only weight-based dosing, involving pharmacists in frontline emergency care, and utilizing computerized provider order entry and clinical decision support systems.

… the relationship between burnout and patient safety. … Sexton JB, Adair KC, Leonard MW, et al. Providing feedback …

… balance. In a previous PSNet interview , the lead author, J. Bryan Sexton, discussed resilience, burnout , and safety culture . …