Ensuring staff have a safe work environment and patients receive safe care are separate but complementary goals. This study describes how elected politicians and healthcare leaders balance workplace safety regulations and patient quality and safety goals in long-term care facilities. Tensions between the groups were identified (e.g., where leaders see flexibility, elected leaders see vagueness). Study themes include creating and improving channels for communication, and clear delineation of roles and responsibilities.

Safety culture is recognized as an essential component of reducing or preventing errors and improving overall patient safety. This commentary calls for greater consistency in defining and measuring safety culture across settings. The authors describe challenges faced by patient safety professionals and researchers, and offer recommendations on overcoming them.

Quality improvement and patient safety programs implement numerous improvement projects over time, and understanding their overall success and long-term sustainability is important. This article describes the impact of improvement toolkits in the labor and delivery ward on a Norwegian hospital since the 1990s. Fourteen tools (e.g., databases, leadership seminars) and their results are described.

Patient safety incident investigations are important tools for identifying failures and facilitators of patient harm. This article provides an overview of the regulatory bodies in Norway that are involved in investigating adverse events and how the language used during these investigative activities can support or impede the process.

… and smart adaptations in hospital practice. … Øyri SF, Braut GS, Macrae C, et al. Investigating hospital …

Based on qualitative data from healthcare professionals and managers at two Norwegian hospitals, this study examined how next-of-kin in cancer care play a role in organizational resilience. Findings show that next-of-kin complement healthcare professionals in the four “potentials” considered essential for resilient performance: potential to respond, potential to monitor, potential to learn, and potential to anticipate.

The authors discuss how involving families in the investigations of fatal adverse events can improve the investigations by broadening perspectives and providing new information, but can also present challenges due to emotions, trust, and potential conflicts in perspectives between providers and families.

A part of the SAFE-LEAD program to promote safety culture in Norwegian nursing homes and home care services, this paper describes perceived challenges by managers and employees in nursing home and home care services prior to intervention implementation. Focus groups with managers and employees reported several challenges, including: lack of care continuity; difficulties balancing budgetary and care needs; lack of communication between care systems and tools (such as different EHR systems that do not communicate), and; inadequate time leading to different error reporting cultures.

… risk management strategy. … Waehle HV, Haugen AS, Wiig S, et al. How does the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist fit …

Using survey data from home healthcare works in Norway, this study examined the relationship between patient safety culture and transformational leadership, job demands/resources and work engagement. The authors found that transformational leadership, job resources and work engagement were positively correlated with patient safety culture, and that transformational leadership was the strongest predictor for safety culture, which is consistent with prior research.

Patients in long-term care are at risk for many types of adverse events. This article describes a leadership development intervention to promote safety culture in Norwegian nursing homes and home care services. A WebM&M commentary reviewed quality and safety issues in nursing homes.

Patient safety in the homecare setting has begun to garner increasing attention. This systematic review explored patient safety issues related to the emerging use of telecare to provide remote services for patients at home. Many risks were identified, but the authors conclude more study is needed to understand telecare-related patient safety.

This study found that methods of detecting and monitoring safety hazards differed widely across five European countries, making it impractical to attempt international comparisons of patient safety.