In this systematic review, the authors characterized patient safety events affecting ethnic minority populations internationally. Findings indicate that ethnic minority populations experience higher rates of hospital-acquired infections, complications, adverse drug events, and dosing errors. The authors identified several factors contributing to the increased risk, including language proficiency, beliefs about illness and treatment, interpreter use, consumer engagement, and interactions with health professionals.

This study applied a patient complaint taxonomy to complaints reported over a 5-year period to a large organization in Australia. Researchers were able to assign each of the complaints to one of the domains of the original taxonomy, but they discovered potential refinements to the model that may improve widespread applicability.

Patient perspectives are critical to inform patient safety efforts. This systematic review identified studies of patient experiences with adverse events. Included studies demonstrate that the types of adverse events patients most often identify are medication errors and suboptimal communication, and that patient demographic characteristics influence the likelihood of reporting these events. Calling for increased use of patient experiences in future studies, the authors suggest that investigations into adverse events are incomplete if patient perspectives are not included. These results demonstrate the ongoing need to enhance patient engagement in safety research. A previous AHRQ WebM&M perspective delves further into engaging patients in safety improvement.

The World Health Organization has set a goal to define global patient safety challenges. Researchers sought to define the frequency and types of patient safety issues, current improvement activities, and contextual considerations and challenges in developing countries in Southeast Asia. Review of 33 publications raised 4 general concerns: the risk of health care–associated infections, medication errors, the quality of maternal and perinatal care, and overall quality of health care delivery. This systematic review also demonstrated a lack of any countrywide or large-scale retrospective medical record review studies to define prevalence of safety incidents in these countries. This knowledge is important for developing a targeted patient safety research agenda for these countries.

This systematic review found little evidence about how to include patient safety skills in clinical supervision. The authors suggest implementing faculty development programs to foster trainees' patient safety skills during clinical rotations, because most learning for postgraduate medical training occurs through supervised experience rather than coursework.

This commentary discusses how health care has evolved since the 1964 Hippocratic Oath revision. The authors examine the Oath in relation to aspects of modern care and suggest that it be updated to incorporate ethics around current technology, human factors, and patient safety.

This commentary outlines a mandatory program that introduced patient-centered concepts into medical training.

This commentary discusses the need to educate clinical supervisors on patient safety competencies to ensure trainees observe and develop safety knowledge and behaviors.

This piece discusses why medical students need a universal patient safety curriculum and outlines such a program.

In this panel discussion from the 2005 American Surgical Association Forum, panelists discuss improving surgical safety and quality.