Patients with learning disabilities encounter unique patient safety threats. This qualitative study explored the care experiences and safety concerns of people with learning disabilities and their caregivers. Researchers identified several protective factors to avoid safety inequities and support safe, high-quality care, including access to social support and advocacy, appropriate staffing, sufficient expertise in care settings, care continuity, and accommodations of individualized care and communication needs.

Patient safety huddles are used to promote team communication about safety threats. Based on direct observations and a survey of teamwork and safety climate, researchers concluded that patient safety huddles across three National Health Service (NHS) trusts improved teamwork and safety culture, especially for nurses.

… people with learning disabilities can improve outcomes. … Louch G, Albutt A, Harlow-Trigg J, et al. Exploring patient safety outcomes … with learning disabilities in acute hospital settings: a scoping review. BMJ Open. 2021;11(5):e047102. …

… should be developed with these factors in mind. … Albutt A, Berzins K, Louch G, Baker J. Health professionals' perspectives of …

This qualitative study interviewed patients and caregivers about their experiences and perceptions of safety within mental health services. These interviews identified a broad range of safety issues; the authors suggest that patient safety in mental health services could be expanded to include harm caused trying to access services and self-harm provoked by contact with, or rejection from, services.

Organizations are encouraged to learn from failure. The authors surveyed hospital pharmacists to explore how organizational learnings relates to safety culture and found that the strongest contributors to safety culture were organizations prioritizing and supporting training and education.

The Patient Reporting and Action for a Safe Environment (PRASE) study was a large patient engagement intervention that proactively solicited hospitalized patient feedback about their safety. This qualitative study found that hospital volunteers could use PRASE tools to sustainably solicit patient feedback in place of paid study staff. However, health care workers did not consistently have means to act upon the safety hazards that patients and volunteers identified. A recent PSNet interview with Rebecca Lawton, lead investigator on the PRASE study, discussed her experience and insights in patient engagement research.

This qualitative evaluation found that a volunteer-administered patient engagement intervention was received positively by patients, families, volunteers, and frontline staff. The authors suggest that this intervention is a promising approach to enhance patient engagement.

Burnout among health care providers is common. In keeping with prior research, this study involving 323 nurses suggests that burnout and depression have important implications for patient safety.

Many patients show physiological signs of worsening for several hours prior to requiring more aggressive interventions and transfer to a higher level of care. Rapid response teams have been widely deployed to address this problem, but this approach is fundamentally reactive rather than proactive and has had mixed results so far. This time series study utilized an electronic physiological surveillance system—a real-time decision support system based on patients' vital signs—embedded within the electronic medical record to provide guidance for clinicians in determining patients at risk for deterioration and optimizing treatment intensity. Implementation of the electronic physiological surveillance system was associated with a statistically significant reduction in mortality for a broad range of diagnoses at both hospitals. The results of this study illustrate the potential of novel information technology approaches for prospectively identifying patients at risk for clinical harm.