The patient safety movement recognizes that most errors occur at the system level, not the individual level, and therefore uses a systems approach toward improving patient safety. A similar systems approach can be used by pharmacy programs to enhance the education of pharmacy students. This article describes the sociotechnical framework of healthcare (structures, processes, outcomes) and parallels with pharmacy programs.

… J Gen Intern Med … Resolving medication errors often requires … care, and electronic health record-related challenges. … Russ-Jara AL, Luckhurst CL, Dismore RA, et al. Care … safety incidents: a qualitative, cognitive task analysis. J Gen Intern Med. Epub 2021 Jan 23. …

… J Patient Saf … J Patient Saf … Cognitive task analysis is a human factors …

… Commission journal on quality and patient safety … Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf … Communication between inpatient …

Clinical decision support alerts can help identify potential drug–drug interactions, but they can also contribute to alert fatigue. This commentary provides recommendations to inform the design of decision support to address drug–drug interactions. The authors suggest that improvement strategies focus on standardizing terminology and visual cues.

This qualitative analysis of verbal handoffs within physician dyads and within nurse dyads found that most questions during handoffs came from incoming providers, who were typically requesting additional information or seeking consensus on clinical reasoning. These results complement a recent study that also supported adding interactive questioning to structured handoff communication.

This qualitative analysis found that anticipatory management conversation occurred in most physician-to-physician and nurse-to-nurse verbal handoffs. The authors suggest that structured handoffs should be supplemented with additional verbal communication regarding relevant contextual information.

This commentary highlights elements of human factors that can be applied to improve efficiency and safety in health care.

… of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA … J Am Med Inform Assoc … This ethnographic study used direct …

… International journal of medical informatics … Int J Med Inform … This study provides a framework to understand …

This study used qualitative techniques to identify essential components of safe and effective patient handoffs between nurses.

… of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA … J Am Med Inform Assoc … This study found that a patient …

… Journal of biomedical informatics … J Biomed Inform … Electronic medical records offer …

… of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA … J Am Med Inform Assoc … This observational study identified …