Medication safety is improved through the sharing of frontline improvement experiences and concerns. These articles share recommendations to reduce risks associated with distinct areas of the medication use process. The topics discuss areas that require specific attention during the COVID-19 pandemic such as the use of smart pumps and automated dispensing cabinets.

Patients with rare diseases present diagnostic challenges. This article introduces the potential for improvements in diagnosis that telemedicine brings to the process through enabling access to appropriate expertise previously limited by geography. 

Telehealth is becoming a standard care mechanism due to COVID-19 concerns. This special issue brief discusses telediagnosis, shares system and associate factors affecting its reliability, challenges in adopting this mode of practice, and areas of research needed to fully understand its impact. This issue brief is part of a series on diagnostic safety.

This newly issued follow up to the seminal AHRQ Making Health Care Safer report (first published in 2001 and updated in 2013 critically examines the evidence supporting 47 separate patient safety practices chosen for the high-impact harms they address. It includes diagnostic errors, failure to rescue, sepsis, infections due to multi-drug resistant organisms, adverse drug events and nursing-sensitive conditions. The report discusses the evidence on cross-cutting safety practices, including safety culture, teamwork and team training, clinical decision support, patient and family engagement, cultural competency, staff education and training, and monitoring, audit and feedback. The report provides recommendations for clinicians and decision-makers on effective patient safety practices.

Unconscious biases affecting health care decisions elevate the potential for harm. This news story discusses how experience and implicit biases can impact physician decision-making. The use of decision support is one strategy highlighted to redirect heuristics and other cognitive biases to minimize their impact on treatment.   

Automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs) have been implemented in hospitals to improve drug administration safety, but with misuse, can cause patient harm. This newsletter article focuses on three primary ADC user-related problems and offers recommendations for reducing factors that minimize their safe use.

Medication error prevention is an evolving goal for health care. This article discusses distinct medications and errors in their use. The authors summarize recommendations to reduction conditions that enable errors and highlights technologies such as computerized prescriber order entry and smart-pumps that show promise in mitigating the summarized errors.  

Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing technologies can enhance clinical decision-making. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of artificial intelligence, this news article cautions against the wide deployment of AI until robust evaluation and implementation strategies are in place to enhance system reliability. A recent PSNet perspective discussed emerging safety issues in the use of artificial intelligence.

Surgical specimen and laboratory process problems can affect diagnosis. This publication examines factors that contribute to errors across the surgical pathology process and reviews strategies to reduce their impact on care. Chapters discuss areas of focus to encourage process improvement and error response, such as information technology, specimen tracking, root cause analysis, and disclosure.

Diagnostic errors can result in harm across the spectrum of practice. Discussing cognitive and system factors in radiology that contribute to diagnostic mistakes, this magazine article recommends ways to reduce risk of errors, including peer review of practice, structured reporting, and artificial intelligence–enabled decision support.

Nuisance alarms, interruptions, and insufficient staff availability can hinder effective monitoring and response to acute patient deterioration. This news article reports on how hospital logistics centers are working toward utilizing artificial intelligence to improve clinician response to alarms by proactively identifying hospitalized patients at the highest risk for heart failure to trigger emergency response teams when their condition rapidly declines.

Drug dispensing systems have been adopted in hospitals to prevent medication errors, but accidents associated with their use still occur. This report provides comprehensive guidelines on the safe use of automated dispensing cabinets. Recommendations include improvement in areas such as stocking, labeling, and removal of expired medications.

Despite years of investment and government support, electronic health records (EHR) continue to face challenges as a patient safety strategy. This news article outlines the unintended consequences of EHR implementation, including patient harm linked to software glitches and user errors, fraudulent behavior (upcoding), interoperability problems, clinician burnout due to poorly designed digital health records, and lack of industry transparency.

Programs are in place to address hospital discharge process gaps that contribute to readmissions. This report summarizes research on primary care perspectives on reducing readmissions. Interventions identified include automated alerting to primary care providers when patients are hospitalized and the patient-centered medical home model.

Despite enhancements in medical imaging technology, diagnostic radiologists are still susceptible to uncertainty, bias, and overconfidence that hinder accurate image assessment. Discussing the scope and impact of human error in diagnostic radiology, this book explores the future of advanced information technologies in diagnostic radiology and provides recommendations to reduce the effect of human fallibility on imaging interpretation.