Although checklist implementation as a safety strategy has achieved some success, it has also faced scrutiny. This magazine article discusses a statewide checklist effort that tested a structured initiative for engaging hospitals in utilizing a pre-surgical checklist in their operating rooms.

Communication-and-resolution approaches to medical errors have garnered support from organizations and patients. This magazine article discusses why, despite documented success, the implementation of this apology and compensation strategy have not yet been established throughout health care.

Highlighting time pressure as a factor in diagnostic error, this magazine article describes efforts to understand why they occur and to determine their incidence, including a report from the Institute of Medicine raising awareness of this issue.

Language barriers can lead to misunderstandings that increase risks of error. This magazine article highlights the frequent reliance on families, friends, and other nonprofessionals as translators in medical settings and discusses how lack of standards and insufficient reporting of errors related to interpreters, along with challenges to implementing programs, hinder progress in improving communication with non-English speaking patients.

Highlighting how insufficient training for staff and failure to conduct testing before implementation can hinder effective integration of tools into existing workflow, this magazine article describes human factors analysis, simulation programs, and safety reporting as strategies to uncover risks when implementing new health care technologies.