Patient engagement and encouragement to speak up about their care can promote patient safety. This qualitative study explored patients’ psychosocial experiences after surviving abdominal surgery complications. Findings highlight an overarching theme of vulnerability and how power imbalances between patients and healthcare professionals can influence speaking up behaviors.

Patients with medical complexities who are receiving palliative care may be at increased risk for patient safety events. This cross-sectional survey found that patient safety concerns were common among patients receiving specialist community palliative care in Germany. Patients reported that physical disability, physical and psychological symptoms, and side effects or complications from medication therapy were the most common causes of impaired safety, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patients can provide a unique perspective on safety concerns but may hesitate to speak up. This study was conducted with 19 recently discharged patients or their family members to understand safety or quality concerns they experienced during their stay and whether they voiced the concern to their care team. The paper presents types of concerns and, if parents did not have concerns, what made them feel safe, as well as barriers and facilitators to speaking up.

Patient and family engagement in safety is a priority for the UK’s National Health Service. This study asked patients in three hospital wards (geriatrics, elective surgery, maternity) how they conceptualize patient safety. Responses described what made them “feel safe” in their experiences with the organization, staff, the patients themselves, and family/carers.

Feedback from patients and other stakeholders can illuminate serious patient safety concerns. This qualitative study analyzed stakeholder feedback about patient safety risks as well as how organizations responded to stakeholder communication and discusses ways in which organizational risk management teams can leverage stakeholder feedback. Findings suggest that stakeholder communications have typically focused on safety issues such as medication errors, but that poor safety culture meant that concerns were often not acted upon.

Communication failures due to hierarchy and silos create opportunities for adverse medication and treatment events. This narrative essay discusses gaps in care coordination that contributed to anticoagulant medication errors. The author outlines areas for improvement such as assignment of accountability for error and commitment to the learning health system as avenues for improvement.

Patients are uniquely situated to identify safety risks that may be missed or not reported by healthcare providers. This study used automated language analysis to analyze more than 140,000 reports submitted by patients and families to an online reporting system in the UK. Despite limitations, online patient feedback can serve as an additional source of potential safety risks.

Understanding patient experience can provide key insights about safety culture. This qualitative study of 80 adult patients concluded that patients’ perspectives of surgical safety are closely tied to the degree of trust they have in their surgeons; this trust is based on the patient’s relationship with their surgeon, communication style, and the patient’s experience during perioperative consultation.

This commentary, authored by patients and families who have experienced medical errors, argues current patient safety efforts in the United States lack urgency and commitment, even as the World Health Organization is increasing its efforts. They call on policy makers and safety agencies to collaborate with the Patients for Patient Safety US organization to move improvement efforts forward.

Children with serious medical conditions are vulnerable to medical errors. This prospective study examined safety reporting behaviors among parents of children with medical complexity and hospital staff caring for these patients in one tertiary children’s hospital. Findings indicate that parents frequently identify medical errors or quality issues, despite not being routinely advised on how to report safety concerns.

Patient and family engagement in safety efforts is supported in research but patients and clinicians still experience barriers in providing and accepting feedback. In this study, parents and caregivers of medically complex children reported uncertainty about whether and to whom to report concerns. Other themes included misalignment of staff and parent expectations of care and staff and leadership buy-in on the value of parent engagement.

Combining patient complaints and staff incident reports allows hospitals to better understand causes of patient harm. This children’s hospital designed a program to investigate serious experience events (SEE) modeled after their serious safety events (SSE) program. Through case studies, the authors describe how patient complaints were investigated to improve both patient experience and safety.

Patient complaints can provide insights into safety threats and system weaknesses. This study used the healthcare complaints analysis tool (HCAT) to identify and categorize safety problems in emergency care. Most problems arose during examination/diagnosis and frequently resulted in diagnostic errors or errors of omission.

Patient complaints and patient-reported incidents can help identify safety issues. This study compared clinician perceptions and patients’ accounts regarding patient safety incidents and identified a significant difference in perceptions about incident severity. Patients’ accounts of incidents commonly described deficiencies related to communication, staff performance, compassion, and respect.

Patient satisfaction surveys, unexpected event reports and patient complaints can each be used to improve patient safety. This radiotherapy service combined the three sources to make improvements in safety and quality. Results highlighted areas of strength (e.g., physical healing, kindness) and areas to improve (e.g., scheduling, comfort). Involving the patient in this way could lead to improvements in quality and safety.

Patients and families represent an often untapped resource in identifying errors and adverse events. Using a mobile health tool, pediatric patients and families were encouraged to report safety events that occurred during the child’s hospital stay. These reports were compared with incident reports (IRs) submitted to the internal incident reporting system. Of the 51 potential IR observations, only one had been submitted to the IR system. Notably, differences in the number of reported events varied by race, ethnicity, insurance status, and other marginalized groups, highlighting a need to explicitly engage these populations.