Retained surgical items (RSIs) can lead to serious patient harm. Survey findings from 21 clinicians and stakeholders in Switzerland emphasized the importance of addressing production pressures, encouraging a culture of safety and teamwork, and implementation of effective counting procedures to reduce the incidence of retained surgical items.

Surgical site infections (SSI) are a common, but preventable, complication following surgery. This study sought to determine the association of commitment to, knowledge of, and social norms surrounding SSI prevention efforts and safety climate strength and level. Based on responses from nearly 2,800 operating room personnel in Sweden, only commitment and social norms were associated with safety climate level. None were associated with safety climate strength.

Incident reporting systems are common tools to detect patient safety hazards. This systematic review synthesized evidence from 41 studies using incident reporting system data to identify and characterize critical incidents. Medication-related incidents and incidents due to “active failures” were the most commonly reported events. The authors observe that only one in three studies reported on corrective actions due to the incidents, highlighting the need to emphasize the importance of learning from errors.

Ensuring that healthcare staff feel comfortable speaking up about safety concerns is an important component of safety culture. This cross-sectional study explored speaking up behaviors and perceptions among healthcare workers in rehabilitation clinics in Switzerland. Barriers to speaking up included expectations of a lack of productive response to the safety concern, presence of patients, and concerns about reactions from involved individuals.

Checklists are used across clinical areas. Following the publication of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist in 2009, other organizations developed their own checklists or adapted the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist for local settings. The authors analyzed 24 checklists used in 18 Swiss hospitals, identified major differences between study checklists and reference checklists and provided recommendations for future research regarding the effectiveness of surgical safety checklists. 

This study examined patient safety issues stemming from health information technology (HIT)-related information management hazards. The authors identified eleven thematic groups describing such hazards occurring at a systemic level, such as fragmentation of patient information, “information islands” (e.g., nurses and physicians have separate information sets despite the same HIT system), and inadequate information structures (e.g., no drug interaction warning integrated in the chemotherapy prescribing tool).

Double checking is one strategy for detecting and preventing medication errors; however, its effectiveness is unclear. This editorial presents a framework intended to further research and clinical practice by defining and classifying checking procedures and differentiating them from other medication-related safety behaviors.

Medication errors are common and particularly dangerous when they involve chemotherapy. Investigators surveyed Swiss oncology nurses about double-checking medications before administration, a widely practiced strategy. Most nurses endorsed double-checking as an effective safety tool, despite the fact that double-checking promotes workflow interruptions, is labor intensive, and is less effective than automated barcode scanning.

Chemotherapy medications can cause severe patient harm if incorrectly dosed or administered. This cross-sectional survey of oncology nurses revealed that most chemotherapy double-checking is conducted jointly rather than independently. Of note, many nurses reported being interrupted to engage in a double-check.

This survey examined the barriers to incident reporting faced by nurses and physicians in Switzerland.