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The PSNet Collection: All Content

The AHRQ PSNet Collection comprises an extensive selection of resources relevant to the patient safety community. These resources come in a variety of formats, including literature, research, tools, and Web sites. Resources are identified using the National Library of Medicine’s Medline database, various news and content aggregators, and the expertise of the AHRQ PSNet editorial and technical teams.

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Displaying 1 - 20 of 27 Results
Fenton SH, Giannangelo KL, Stanfill MH. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021;28:2346-2353.
The World Health Organization (WHO) released the International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision (ICD-11) in 2018. In addition to the medical entities such as disease and injury, it contains a second component, the ICD-11 Mortality and Morbidity Statistics (MMS) linearization. The authors evaluated whether the ICD-11 MMS is appropriate for use in patient safety and quality or if a USA-specific clinical modification is necessary. 
O’Connor P, Madden C, O’Dowd E, et al. Int J Qual Health Care. 2021;33:mzab117.
There are many challenges associated with detecting and measuring patient safety events. This meta-review provides an overview of approaches to measuring and monitoring safety in primary care. The authors suggest that instead of developing new methods for measuring and monitoring safety, researchers should focus on expanding the generalizability and comparability of existing methods, many of which are readily available, quick to administer, do not require external involvement, and are inexpensive.
Schnock KO, Biggs B, Fladger A, et al. J Patient Saf. 2021;17:e462-e468.
Hospitals have implemented radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology to improve patient safety. This systematic review of 5 studies suggests that use of RFID can lead to rapid, accurate detection of retained surgical instruments (RSIs) and reduced risk of counting errors.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. June 7-8, 2021.

Maternal safety is challenged by clinical, equity, and social influences. This virtual event examined maternal health conditions in the United States to improve health system practice and performance for this population. Discussions addressed the need for better data collection, evidence-based practice, and social determinants knowledge integration to enhance the safety of care.
Barbash IJ, Davis BS, Yabes JG, et al. Ann Intern Med. 2021;174:927-935.
Starting in 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has required hospitals to report adherence to the Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock Early Management Bundle (SEP-1). This study examined sepsis patient encounters at one health system two years before and two years after SEP-1 implementation. Results indicate variable changes in process measures but no improvement in clinical outcomes. The authors suggest revising the measure with more flexible guidelines that allow clinician discretion may improve patient outcomes.
Field TS, Fouayzi H, Crawford S, et al. J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2021;22:2196-2200.
Transitioning from hospital to nursing home (NH) can be a vulnerable time for patients. This study looked for potential associations between adverse events (AE) for NH residents following hospital discharge and NH facility characteristics (e.g., 5-star quality rating, ownership, bed size). Researchers found few associations with individual quality indicators and no association between the 5-star quality rating or composite quality score. Future research to reduce AEs during transition from hospital to NH should look beyond currently available quality measures.
Abbas M, Robalo Nunes T, Martischang R, et al. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control. 2021;10:7.
The large burden placed on hospitals and healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about nosocomial transmission of the virus. This narrative review summarizes existing reports on nosocomial outbreaks of COVID-19 and the strategies health systems have implemented to control healthcare-associated outbreaks. The authors found little evidence describing the role of healthcare workers in reducing or amplifying infection transmission in healthcare settings.  
Myers LC, Blumenthal KG, Phadke NA, et al. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2021;47:54-59.
Learning from adverse events is a core component of patient safety improvement. These authors developed guidance for the use of peer review protected information (such as voluntary event reports and root causes analyses) in safety research. The guidance aims to ensure that data are handled safely and appropriately while supporting scientific discovery.  
Mahajan P, Pai C-W, Cosby KS, et al. Diagnosis (Berl). 2021;8:340-346.
Diagnostic error is an ongoing patient safety challenge that can result in patient harm. This literature review identified a set of emergency department (ED)-focused electronic health record (EHR) triggers (e.g., death following ED visit, change in treating service after admission, unscheduled return to the ED resulting in admission) and non-EHR based signals (e.g., patient complaints, referral to risk management) with the potential to screen ED visits for diagnostic safety events.
Donovan AL, Aaronson EL, Black L, et al. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2021;47:23-30.
Patient suicide, attempted suicide, or self-harm are considered ‘never events.’ This article describes the development and implementation of a safety protocol for emergency department (ED) patients at risk for self-harm, including the creation of safe bathrooms and increasing the number of trained observers in the ED. Implementation of the protocol was correlated with lower rates of self-harm.  
Veazie S, Peterson K, Bourne D, et al. J Patient Saf. 2022;18:e320-e328.
This review expands upon previous work evaluating implementation strategies for high-reliability organizations. Review findings indicate that health care system adoption of high-reliability principles is associated with improved outcomes, but the level of evidence is low. Future research should include concurrent control groups to minimize bias and focus on whether certain high-reliability frameworks, metrics, or intervention components lead to greater improvements.  
Talcott WJ, Lincoln H, Kelly JR, et al. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2020;10:312-320.
Peer review of radiation oncology patient treatment plans can help prevent harm and reduce errors. In this prospective blinded study, researchers generated treatment plans with simulated errors and randomly inserted these treatment plans into weekly chart rounds to assess the effectiveness of peer review on error detection. Overall detection rate of clinically significant problematic plans was 55%. The authors suggest that error detection could be significantly improved by shortening chart rounds and routine insertion of problematic plans into rounds.

Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; August 2020. AHRQ Pub. No. 20-0048.

AHRQ has released the Network of Patient Safety Databases (NPSD) Chartbook 2020, which offers an overview of nonidentifiable, aggregated patient safety event and near-miss information, voluntarily reported by AHRQ-listed Patient Safety Organizations across the country between July 2012 and December 2019. The chartbook outlines the extent of harm reported, distribution of patient safety events, near misses, and unsafe conditions. This iteration of the chartbook contains an additional 619,111 reports not included in the prior NSPD chartbook.  
Choudhury A, Asan O. JMIR Med Inform. 2020;8:e18599.
This systematic review explored how artificial intelligence (AI) based on machine learning algorithms and natural language processing is used to address and report patient safety outcomes. The review suggests that AI-enabled decision support systems can improve error detection, patient stratification, and drug management, but that additional evidence is needed to understand how well AI can predict safety outcomes.  
Härkänen M, Turunen H, Vehviläinen-Julkunen K. J Patient Saf. 2020;16.
This study compared medication errors detected using incident reports, the Global Trigger Tool method, and direct observations of patient records. Incident reports and the Global Trigger Tool more commonly identified medication errors likely to cause harm. Omission errors were commonly identified by all three methods, but identification of other errors varied. For example, incident reports most commonly identified wrong dose and wrong time errors. The contributing factors also varied by method, but in general, communication issues and human factors were the most common contributors.
Wiig S, Hibbert PD, Braithwaite J. Int J Qual Health Care. 2020;32.
The authors discuss how involving families in the investigations of fatal adverse events can improve the investigations by broadening perspectives and providing new information, but can also present challenges due to emotions, trust, and potential conflicts in perspectives between providers and families.

Auerbach AD, Bates DW, Rao JK, et al, eds. Ann Intern Med. 2020;172(11_Supp):S69-S144.

Research and error reporting are important strategies to uncover problems in health system performance. This special issue highlights vendor transparency and context as important areas of focus to ensure electronic health records (EHR) research and reporting help improve system reliability. The articles cover topics such as a framework for research reporting, design of randomized controlled trials for technology studies, and designing research on patient portal enhancement.
Fortman E, Hettinger AZ, Howe JL, et al. J Am Med Info Assoc. 2020;27:924-928.
Physicians from different health systems using two computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems participated in simulated patient scenarios using eye movement recordings to determine whether the physician looked at patient-identifying information when placing orders. The rate of patient identification overall was 62%, but the rate varied by CPOE system. An expert panel identified three potential reasons for this variation – visual clutter and information density, the number of charts open at any given time, and the importance placed on patient identification verification by institutions.  
Madden C, Lydon S, O’Dowd E, et al. J Patient Saf. 2022;18:e51-e60.
Patient engagement has been recognized as a National Patient Safety Goal, and patients play a key role in ensuring safety in health care. This systematic review discusses 31 different patient-reported safety climate measures addressing items such as patient-centered care, health care costs, and comfort. The authors note that few measures report satisfactory validity and reliability, and few measures have had systematic usability testing. They suggest that future research focus on developing a stand-alone measure with high validity and reliability, and assess core safety climate domains from a patient perspective with an emphasis in primary care.