The operating room is a high-risk environment involving complex tasks. This study used cognitive task analysis (CTA) to explore how anesthesia nurses and anesthesiologists manage complex everyday situations during intraoperative care processes. Findings underscore the importance of available resources, team composition, and non-technical skills (NTS) for managing complex daily work and promoting patient safety.

This guideline reviews recommendations and best-practice statements from an international consensus committee on sepsis treatment and management to guide safe care for patients with sepsis or septic shock.

This study reports on the development of an incident reporting system designed according to human factors engineering principles.

Peer feedback was effective at reducing unsafe behaviors of physicians and staff in this Israeli study.

Improving perioperative safety requires optimal communication within the surgical team; however, classic studies have shown that teamwork in the operating room is often suboptimal. This study successfully improved communication and safety through creation of a structured preoperative briefing protocol for gynecologic and orthopedic procedures. The protocol required discussion of critical operative elements between the surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses prior to surgery. Checklists have been remarkably successful at reducing perioperative adverse events, and this protocol incorporated some elements of previously published perioperative checklists and The Joint Commission's Universal Protocol. However, the protocol used in this study focused on creating shared situational awareness among all team members, and did not explicitly mandate specific steps as in a checklist. An accompanying editorial discusses the cultural challenges that have accompanied attempts to improve surgical safety.

Specific labels for high-risk intravenous medications successfully reduced medication errors and allowed nurses to identify medications more efficiently.

This statement outlines the evidence around patient safety improvement and professes the intent of the European Society of Intensive Care to lead a patient safety initiative throughout Europe.

… research by demonstrating a relationship between a unit's safety climate and its adherence to patient safety …

… they emphasize should be amenable to intervention. … Donchin Y, Gopher D, Olin M, et al. A look into the nature and causes of human …