… professional disciplines rather than across disciplines (e.g., physician to nurse) and surgery was the most commonly …

This article describes an online training module for surgeons to learn and assess nontechnical skills using the Nontechnical Skills for Surgeons (NOTSS) framework (eNOTSS). This platform could support nontechnical skills learning for a global audience. Next steps for platform development and implementation include creating capability for personalized feedback on nontechnical skills and garnering buy-in from health system leadership.

Communication failures in the operating room are a well-recognized threat to patient safety. Researchers observed and analyzed communication across seven operating room teams during a simulated emergency using a closed-loop communication framework. They found that communication patterns varied by specialty and that the patient's clinical status influenced whether directed communication resulted in a response.

Nontechnical skills are gaining interest as a way to enhance surgical team performance. This commentary describes a model for identifying, training, and assessing surgeon competencies in a defined set of nontechnical skills during pediatric surgery.

This study conducted in the United Kingdom indicates that supportive, safety-oriented behaviors by senior nurses are associated with improved performance on safety indicators.

Direct observation of postoperative handoffs revealed that clinicians' subjective impressions and concerns were a critical component of a high-quality transfer of care and were considered more important than the transmission of standard clinical information.

This study highlights the importance of dedicated pre-handover time to foster effective patient handoffs.

Situational awareness refers to the degree to which perception matches reality. This study assessed situational awareness of intensive care unit teams through direct observation of team rounds and assessment of the degree to which team members were able to anticipate clinical deterioration.

This review explores surgeon intraoperative leadership behaviors and how they affect team performance and safety.

This review explored patient transfer in hospitals to identify common areas for communication failures during handoffs.

This review discusses the role of safety culture surveys in assessing safety climate at the unit and hospital level, and explores the relationship between survey results and safety behaviors and outcomes.

This editorial discusses how disruptive behaviors can impair performance and may be particularly hazardous in the health care setting.

This narrative review highlights cognitive and social skills that contribute to safe and effective teamwork in the operating room.

First-year medical students had positive attitudes toward patient safety, but little knowledge of how to report or respond to errors. A case in which a medical student failed to report an error is discussed in this AHRQ WebM&M commentary.

This review analyzes how teamwork in the intensive care unit (ICU) influences outcomes. The authors formulate a framework for team performance including communication, leadership, and decision making.

This study describes the use of a tool used by surgeons to measure non-technical and behavioral skills of their fellow surgeons in the operating room.

This article examines how effective communication, as taught through assessment tools and team training, has led to a reduction in adverse events in acute care environments.

This study describes the development and implementation of a medical student curriculum that focuses on patient safety principles and skills. Although the module was rated highly, participants pointed out the difficulty in translating the skills into practice.

The author discusses current trends in using safety climate questionnaires to measure safety culture in health care organizations. This article is part of a special issue that includes several papers on improving safety culture.

This review discusses how human factors can improve safety in anesthesia and suggests tactics to formally incorporate it into anesthesiology curriculum.