Situation awareness refers to the degree to which perception matches reality. This narrative review explored how situation awareness has been defined and studied in healthcare, with a particular focus on nursing. Three overarching themes were identified: (1) individual, team and systems perspectives of situation awareness; (2) situation awareness and patient safety, and (3) communication tools, technologies and education to support situation awareness. The authors note that future research should reflect nurse’s work and the constrictions imposed on situation awareness by the demands of busy impatient wards.

Patient safety incidents occurring in prehospital care settings are gaining increasing attention. This systematic review including both peer-reviewed studies and grey literature found that the incidence rate of prehospital patient safety incidents is similar to hospital rates. The authors identified an average of 5.9 patient safety incidents per 100 records/transports/patients occurring in prehospital care; approximately 15% of these incidents resulted in patient harm. The authors discuss methodological challenges to preshopital care research and make recommendations for future studies.

There are many challenges associated with detecting and measuring patient safety events. This meta-review provides an overview of approaches to measuring and monitoring safety in primary care. The authors suggest that instead of developing new methods for measuring and monitoring safety, researchers should focus on expanding the generalizability and comparability of existing methods, many of which are readily available, quick to administer, do not require external involvement, and are inexpensive.

In this retrospective study, researchers sought to understand the frequency of adverse events across Irish hospitals in the context of recent financial constraints. Review of 1574 records from inpatient admissions revealed that adverse events occurred in approximately 12% of cases and contributed to significantly increased costs.

… Postgraduate medical journal … Postgrad Med J … This meta-analysis found that while there is clear …

Previous research has shown that junior physicians may be unwilling to question senior physicians. This article describes an educational program for interns that successfully improved knowledge and attitudes regarding speaking up but had not yet measurably changed behaviors.

This qualitative study identified several barriers to the implementation of a surgical safety checklist.

A prospective error detection system, modeled on the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program reporting system, improved the detection of preventable adverse events in general surgery patients compared with traditional retrospective chart review.