Surgery requires specialized approaches to understand and prevent failure. This special issue features the work of multidisciplinary research teams that explored human factors and ergonomic concerns in the operating room that affect communication between robotic-assisted surgery teams, physical resilience of teams, instrument design and use, and poor implementation of briefings as improvement opportunities.

The Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human, marked the founding of the patient safety field. This special issue of Health Affairs, published 20 years after that report, highlights achievements and progress to date. One implementation study of evidence-based surgical safety checklists demonstrated that leadership involvement, intensive activities, and engagement of frontline staff are all critical to successful adoption of safety practices. Another study demonstrated that communication-and-resolution programs either decreased or did not affect malpractice costs, providing further support for implementing such programs. Experts describe the critical role of human factors engineering in patient safety and outline how to enhance the use of these methods. The concluding editorial by David Bates and Hardeep Singh points to progress in reducing hospital-acquired infections and improving medication safety in acute care settings and highlights remaining gaps in the areas of outpatient care, diagnostic errors, and electronic health record safety. In the related information, the Moore Foundation provides free access to five articles in this special issue.

The systems approach has long been heralded as a key element to safe patient care. Articles in this special issue explore techniques to engage clinicians and leadership in supporting a systems engineering philosophy to optimize safety improvement efforts.

Care teams rely on a variety of technologies to support safe practice. This special issue focuses on critical care nursing practice and how human factors affect technology use. Articles cover clinical applications of technology and review the role of technologies in critical thinking, medication delivery, and alarm fatigue.

Systems and space design are important considerations for safe care delivery. This special issue explores how the built environment can affect safety in intensive care units (ICUs). Articles explore topics such as infection prevention, decentralization of nursing work areas, information flow, and nurse perception of how design features in ICUs affect their ability to care for patients.

Applying principles from other fields, such as aviation and nuclear power, to patient safety efforts can help generate sustainable improvements. Articles in this special issue explore how organizational behaviors, human factors, and resilience engineering can uncover risks and enhance system performance in pediatrics.

Nurses have a key role in patient safety and advocacy in critical care settings. Articles in this special issue explore the impact of interruptions on nursing care, ward rounds as an opportunity for checklist use, and the importance of integrating safety concepts into nursing education.

This special issue covers elements of safe care delivery in neurosurgery and features articles exploring the use of simulation, checklists, and the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle in designing safety and quality improvement initiatives for this setting.

Articles in this special supplement draw from AHRQ-funded efforts to reveal how designing around space and human factors can reduce the spread of health care–associated infections. Design interventions described include air filtration systems, decontamination of water sources, and antimicrobial surfaces.

This special issue includes articles discussing tactics to improve safety in neurosurgery, including tools, time-outs, and incident reporting.

This special issue explores safety in anesthesia, including safety culture, incident reporting, and handoffs.

This special issue highlights discussions on simulation as a tool to address how human factors can influence patient care.

This special issue contains articles discussing human factors and ergonomics in health care simulation, information technology use, hospitals, and home care to reveal opportunities for safety improvement.

This piece highlights nurses' responses to a national survey that explored problems associated with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) medication administration timing requirement.

This special issue provides articles that discuss leadership roles, human factors, risk management, and data collection concepts that promote patient safety.

Articles in this special issue describe strategies to reduce infections in the intensive care unit, including human factors design, guideline use, collaborative projects, and hand hygiene compliance.

This special issue includes numerous articles discussing how human factors, communication, and latent system factors affect safety.

Articles in this special issue discuss safe practices, effective staffing, teamwork, and event analysis to enhance patient safety in the critical care setting.

This supplement focuses on strategies to enhance medication safety in the intensive care unit, including adverse drug event surveillance systems and human factors improvements.

This collection of articles covers issues important to safety during labor and delivery, including teamwork, evidence-based care, and safety culture.