Previous research suggests that residents may underutilize adverse event reporting tools. This article describes an 18-month clinical learning collaborative among 16 sites intended to increase resident and fellow participation in patient safety event investigations. Researchers found the collaborative increased participation in event investigation and improved the quality of the investigation.

While the association between clinician burnout and patient safety are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic brought this safety concern back to the forefront. In this study conducted at 60 US Magnet hospitals, nurses and physicians reported high levels of burnout and rated their hospital unfavorably on patient safety. Increased nurse staffing was the top recommendation to reduce burnout with less emphasis on wellness and resilience programs.

Patient safety improvements must consider the complexities of care delivery to achieve lasting change. This commentary discusses recent evidence examining the effect of duty hour limit adjustments. The authors highlight challenges regarding research design on this medical education policy change and how it affects learner and patient experience. They suggest caution in applying the study conclusions. 

Operational failures – breakdowns in care processes, such as distractions or situational constraints – can impact healthcare delivery. This cross-sectional analysis using population-based survey data from 11,709 nurses examined the relationship between operational failures, patient satisfaction, nurse-reported quality and safety, and nurse job outcomes. Findings indicate that operational failures negatively impact patient satisfaction, quality and safety, and contribute to poor nurse job outcomes, such as burnout.  

Missed steps in the diagnostic process, such as timely referral for surgical consultation, can lead to missed or delayed diagnoses. This large, retrospective cohort study using Medicare data identified disparities between Black and White patients in receipt of consults for emergency surgery. Findings show that Black patients had lower odds of receiving a surgical consultation after being admitted from the emergency department; these disparities remained after adjusting for medical comorbidities, socioeconomic factors, and individual hospital-level effects.

… disadvantaged patients. … Viscardi MK,   French R, Brom H, et al. Care quality, patient safety, and nurse …

While research shows that better nurse staffing ratios are associated with improved patient outcomes, policies setting minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in hospitals are rarely implemented. In 2016, select Queensland (Australia) hospitals implemented minimum nurse staffing ratios. Compared to hospitals that did not implement minimum nurse staffing ratios, length of stay, mortality, and readmission rates were significantly lower in intervention hospitals, providing evidence, once again, that minimum staffing ratios can improve patient outcomes. 

Imaging is an important tool in the pediatric emergency department to guide diagnosis and treatment. In this study, researchers analyzed more than 3.6 million emergency department visits for patients younger than 18 years to evaluate racial and ethnic differences in diagnostic imaging rates. One-third of visits by non-Hispanic white children included imaging, compared with 24% of visits by non-Hispanic Black and 26% of Hispanic children. Given the risks of both radiation exposure and missed diagnoses, strategies to mitigate these disparities must be investigated.

… pronounced for Black patients. … Carthon MB, Brom H, McHugh M, et al. Better nurse staffing is associated with survival …

This study used survey data from nurses and patients in 254 hospitals in New York and Illinois between December 2019 and February 2020 to determine the association between nurse staffing and outcomes, patient experience, and nurse burnout. A significant number of nurses who experienced burnout viewed their hospitals’ safety unfavorably and would not recommend their hospital. Analyses indicated that each additional patient per nurse increased the odds of unfavorable reports from nurses and patients and demonstrates the implications of understaffing, even before COVID-19.    

Physicians who behave unprofessionally toward other health care workers compromise both safety culture and patient health. Hostile behavior among surgeons is particularly harmful because surgical care is both teamwork-dependent and has high stakes. Although many have reported anecdotally that disrespectful surgeon behavior has led to patient harm, it is challenging to study systematically. Investigators sought to determine whether patients whose surgeons had coworker reports of unprofessional behavior experienced more harm. Surgeons at two academic medical centers who had coworker reports of unprofessional behavior in the 3 years before a surgery were more likely to have patients experience both medical and surgical complications after the surgery. These findings highlight the importance of empowering team members to report unprofessional behavior so that it can be remediated. Two WebM&M commentaries describe different approaches to addressing unprofessional physician behavior.

The overprescribing of opioids for postsurgery pain can increase the potential for opioid dependence, misuse, and harm. Discussing this worldwide patient safety concern, this commentary summarizes clinician, patient, and systemic factors that contribute to the problem and outlines efforts to address the issue while enabling clinicians to provide safe pain therapy to patients.

This qualitative study examined incident reports about surgical patients, comparing trainee reports to those submitted by attending surgeons and nurses. Trainees were more likely to enter reports anonymously and completed more elements for each report, but they also used more blame language and submitted fewer reports overall. The results suggest that encouraging trainee reporting may shed light on surgical safety.

Prior research suggests that improved nursing resources may be associated with decreased mortality and adverse events. However, less is known about how changes to nursing resources in the inpatient setting may affect quality and safety over time. In this study involving 737 hospitals and survey data from nurses obtained in 2006 and 2016, researchers found that after adjusting for numerous factors, better nursing resources in terms of work environment, staffing, and education was associated with improvement in quality and patient safety outcomes. A PSNet perspective discussed the impact of nursing resources on patient safety.

Factors in the hospital work environment can affect nurses' ability to provide safe care. In this survey study, investigators examined trends in nurse ratings of their work environment and patient ratings of care quality at 535 hospitals between 2005 and 2016. Over this time frame, about 20% of hospitals showed significant improvements in work environment scores, while 7% of hospitals demonstrated declining scores. There was an association between an improving work environment and better patient satisfaction. The authors conclude that lack of improvement in work environments may worsen safety culture and impede efforts to enhance patient safety. A PSNet interview with Linda Aiken discussed how nurse staffing and the work environment can affect patient safety and outcomes.

… emergency medicine physicians missed. A past WebM&M commentary laid out challenges in classifying diagnostic …

Time and schedule constraints can hinder efforts to investigate quality improvement in the practice environment. This commentary describes an innovation built on the mortality and morbidity conference concept that provides education and supports discussion of improvement opportunities in a time-efficient structured format.

Researchers analyzed patient discharge data and hospital characteristics, as well as patient and nurse survey data, across adult acute care hospitals in six European countries. After adjusting for hospital and patient variables, they found that hospitals in which nursing care was provided to a greater degree by skilled nurses had lower odds of mortality. The authors argue against replacing professional nurses with nursing assistants and suggest that doing so may compromise patient safety by increasing preventable deaths.

Surgical site infections are a common hospital-acquired condition. This clinical guideline reviews the literature and gathers expert opinion to identify generalizable evidence-based strategies to reduce surgical site infections. The authors highlight antimicrobial, preoperative hygiene, glycemic control, and skin preparation procedures to prevent infection.

… Journal of the American College of Surgeons … J Am Coll Surg … Analyzing data from a prior trial of …