Patients and clinicians may hold implicit gender biases and rate women clinicians more negatively. In this study, adverse event reports written about residents were reviewed to determine if resident gender was associated with different types and frequency of incident reports. The most comment complaint about men physicians involved a medical error, while the most common complaint type about women included a communication-related event. Additionally, women were more frequently identified by name only, without a title such as “doctor”.

Encouraging adverse event reporting among health care providers, including medical trainees, is critical to improving patient safety. This qualitative study convened focus groups to elucidate what factors support event reporting among medical residents. Residents were more likely to use reporting tools when they had received training about the process, and identified specific interventions, to encourage reporting, such as role modeling by faculty.

Medication administration errors are common and costly, especially for children. Investigators conducted a multipronged quality improvement intervention for pediatric medication administration. First, they implemented a one-time simulation training for pediatric bedside nurses across emergency department, hospital ward, and intensive care settings to foster use of standardized medication administration best practices. They observed bedside nursing via audits for 18 months of follow-up. Adherence to best practices improved from 51% of medication administration instances to 84%, and the rate of medication administration errors declined significantly. The authors suggest that simulation training is an effective strategy to improve the safety of pediatric medication administration.

Medical residents are increasingly exposed to patient safety concepts during their training. This commentary describes the implementation of a longitudinal curriculum to augment resident physicians' error reporting at a pediatric hospital. The project team found the program to be effective in improving the rates of reporting by both residents and other clinicians at the organization.

Using the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, this study compared how trainees and staff in 10 hospitals in an integrated health system perceived safety. Trainee and staff perceptions of safety culture differed, highlighting the challenges of coming to a common understanding of safety culture.

Direct feedback based on a standardized checklist resulted in an improvement in the quality of internal medicine interns' written signouts.

The clinical outcomes of trauma patients improved at Pennsylvania hospitals after the implementation of work hour regulations for residents. However, a similar improvement was also seen at trauma facilities not staffed by residents, indicating that the duty hour regulations probably were not responsible for the improved patient outcomes.

The authors analyzed the literature and identified laboratory and pharmacy triggers used to detect adverse drug events (ADE) in hospitalized adults and calculated estimates of positive predictive values for individual signals.

… and quality of care. … Scanlon DP, Swaminathan S, Chernew M, Bost JE, Shevock J. Competition and health plan performance: …