Providing in-home care for home-dwelling adults presents unique patient safety challenges. This qualitative study with 13 registered nurses in Sweden explored how nurses ensure safe home health care among home-dwelling older patients. Findings highlight the importance of continuity of care, trust between patients, caregivers, and nurses, and adapting safety requirements to meet environmental conditions and maintain a sense of home.

… stroke compared to first procedures. … Zhang D, Gu D, Rao C, et al. Outcome differences between surgeons performing …

… death, and the most common category was surgical . … Zheng MY, Lui H, Patino G, et al. Morbidity and mortality …

… use of intraoperative checklists. … Cohen AJ, Lui H, Zheng M, et al. Rates of serious surgical errors in …

This systematic review sought to determine the impact of automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs), barcode medication administration (BCMA), and closed-loop electronic medication management systems (EMMS) used by hospitals in reducing controlled substance medication errors in hospitals. Overall, only 4 studies (out of 16) focused directly on controlled medications. A variety of types of errors (e.g., log-in, data, entry, override) compromised patient safety. High-quality targeted research is urgently needed to evaluate the risks and benefits of medication-related technology.

Clinicians commonly use free-text to generate electronic prescriptions (e-prescriptions); however, these e-prescriptions often require double-checking and transcription by pharmacist staff to avoid potential medication errors. This retrospective study found that about half of the patient directions on e-prescriptions contained at least one quality issue (e.g., dose, frequency of administration) and that pharmacy staff spend significant time and effort identifying and correcting these issues.

… the system factors contributing to the errors. … Kinlay M, Zheng WY, Burke R, et al. Medication errors related to …

COVID-19 restrictions and patient concerns have expanded access to telemedicine worldwide. This review examines the use of telemedicine in surgical services. The authors found it to be a safe care modality for low-risk patients receiving low-risk procedures. They found that telemedicine in surgical services evidence base is expanding and its value is built on local, real-time approaches that involve services designed to consider patient needs and comfort. 

The ”weekend effect” refers to worse patient outcomes occurring outside of usual business hours. The authors used national data to examine in-hospital mortality differences among patients experiencing stroke admitted on the weekend versus on a weekday. After adjusting for patient and hospital characteristics, in-hospital mortality among hemorrhagic stroke patients was significantly greater among weekend compared to weekday admissions. No weekend effect was found among ischemic stroke patients. Future research should explore the influence of additional factors, such as patient-level behavioral risk factors and the availability of care providers and stroke care centers, particularly in rural regions.  

This article describes innovative strategies pharmacists in China have explored to address the COVID-19 pandemic, such as establishing prescribing and workforce guidelines, utilizing remote inpatient order review and dispensing, and other telepharmacy approaches.  

This systematic review examined the override rates of several different clinical decision support approaches. Researchers conclude that role tailoring—the provision of different alerts to prescribers versus pharmacists—was the most successful method to reduce alert fatigue. They recommend redesigning decision support to reduce alert fatigue.

… was associated with decreased rates of adverse events . … Zheng S, Tucker AL, Ren ZJ, Heineke J, McLaughlin A, Podell …

Artificial intelligence may have the potential to improve patient safety by enhancing diagnostic capability. In this study, researchers applied machine learning techniques to a large amount of pediatric electronic health record data and found that their model was able to achieve diagnostic accuracy analogous to that of skilled pediatricians.