Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare can affect patient safety and contribute to adverse health outcomes. This review outlines the impact of health disparities and treatment decision-making biases (implicit bias, default bias, delay discounting, and availability bias) on cancer-related adverse effects among Black cancer survivors. The authors identify several ways that nurses may help mitigate health disparity-related adverse treatment effects, such as providing culturally appropriate care; assessing patient health literacy and comprehension; educating, empowering, and advocating for patients; and adhering to evidence-based guidelines for monitoring and management of treatment-related adverse events. The authors also discuss the importance of ongoing training on the impact of structural racism, ways to mitigate its effects, and the role of research and implementation to reduce implicit bias.

Failure to rescue, the delayed or missed recognition of a potentially fatal complication that results in the patient’s death, is particularly tragic in obstetric care. Using the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) framework, the authors describe the work system, process, and outcomes related to failure to rescue, and develop intervention theories.

The care of child abuse victims is affected by resource, racial and infrastructure challenges. This commentary describes how the systemic weaknesses catalyzed by poor data collection approaches contribute to misdiagnosis and suggests that successes be mined to minimize the proliferation of continued disparities in this patient population.

Based on analysis of four years of data submitted to the Child Health Patient Safety Organization (CHILDPSO), researchers sought to identify types of serious safety events and contributing factors. Three main groups of serious safety events were identified: patient care management, procedural errors, and product or device errors. Contributing factors included lack of situational awareness, process failures, and failure to communicate effectively.

Many factors influence the success of implementation and sustainment of patient safety interventions. Through a review of 38 research articles about safety training, researchers were able to develop a theoretical framework integrating safety training engagement and application of learned skills. They discuss individual, organizational, and contextual factors that influence safety training engagement and application.

Constrained diagnostic situations in the emergency department (ED), such as crowding, can impact safe care. Based on multiple years of electronic health record data from one ED at a large U.S. hospital, researchers found that providers were significantly less likely to prescribe opioids during constrained diagnostic situations and less likely to prescribe opioids to high-risk patients or racial/ethnic minorities.

Trauma resuscitation is a complex, specialized process with a high risk for errors. Researchers analyzed videotapes of in situ simulations to evaluate latent safety events occurring during trauma resuscitation. Themes influencing latent safety events related to physical workspace, mental model formation, equipment, unclear accountability, demands exceeding individuals’ capacity, and task-specific issues.

This article explored the interface of technology and patients in home care. Researchers identified three work processes that contribute to patient safety: aligning people with technologies, being alert and staying calm, and coordinating activities based on people and technology. Topics for future research should include the division of labor on home care shifts, the need for new routines and education in telecare for care workers, and how decisions are made regarding home technology.

Decreasing inpatient falls requires improvements in both processes of care and the care environment. This integrative review found that some elements of the built environments have not been rigorously examined and concluded that objective and actionable knowledge on physical design solutions to reduce falls is limited.  

Physician language choice can reflect implicit biases, which can compromise patient care. In this study, researchers conducted a content analysis of 600 clinic notes to explore how physicians communicate disbelief in medical records and racial and gender differences in the use of such language. Three linguistic features suggesting disbelief were identified: (1) use of quotes (e.g., patient had a “reaction” to the medication), (2) use of judgement words – such as “claims” or “insists” – that imply doubt, and (3) reporting patient experiences as hearsay (e.g., “the patient reports that the symptom started yesterday"). The researchers found that these linguistic features were more common in notes written about Black patients compared to white patients; no gender differences were identified.

In addition to being used for patient-specific clinical purposes, data within the electronic health record (EHR) may be used for other purposes including epidemiological research. Researchers in the UK developed and tested a clinical decision support system (CDSS) to evaluate changes in the types and number of observations that primary care physicians entered into the EHR during simulated patient encounters. Physicians documented more clinical observations using the CDSS compared to the standard electronic health record. The increase in documented clinical observations has the potential to improve validity of research developed from EHR data.

Implicit bias can contribute to poor decision-making and lead to poor patient outcomes. This qualitative study found that many healthcare providers have negative implicit attitudes about American Indians, such as implicitly stereotyping American Indians as "noncompliant" patients. The effect of these implicit attitudes and stereotypes was moderated by self-reported cultural competency and implicit bias training.

Challenges to identifying and measuring diagnostic errors, particularly in the era of COVID-19, persist. The authors of this perspective proposed a new framework of diagnostic process safety to measure the quality and safety of diagnostic processes. The framework focuses on three measurable components – do not miss diagnoses, red flags, and diagnostic pitfalls. This framework can provide a structured approach for designing and testing specific measures of diagnostic process safety.

Reducing harm related to diagnostic error remains a major focus within patient safety. Based on input from an international group of experts and stakeholders, the authors identified priority questions to advance diagnostic safety research. High-priority areas include strengthening teamwork factors (such as the role of nurses in diagnosis), addressing system factors, and strategies for engaging patients in the diagnostic process.

Delays in cancer diagnosis can lead to treatment delays and patient harm. This study linking primary care and cancer registry data found that more than one-quarter of bladder and kidney cancer patients presenting with fast-tract referral features did not achieve a timely diagnosis. These findings suggest inadequate adherence to guidelines intended to help identify patients with high risk of cancer based on the presence of alarm signs and symptoms.

Structural racism affects both population and individual health. This article proposes four key areas in which the medical and public health communities can contribute in order to change policy and social norms: documenting the impact of racism on health; improving the collection and availability of race and ethnicity data; turning the lens to themselves; and, acknowledging that structural racism has been challenged by mass social movements.

Prior studies have shown that adverse events can increase during the implementation of a new electronic health record (EHR) system. EHR transitions are remarkably expensive, laborious, personnel devouring, and time consuming. This article presents recommendations to facilitate transitions between one EHR system to another and opportunities for problem mitigation to avoid patient safety events.

Health information technology has the potential to improve patient safety in both inpatient and outpatient settings. This systematic review explored the effect of technology networks across health systems (e.g., linking patient records across different organizations) on care coordination and medication reconciliation for older adults living at home. The authors identified several barriers to use of such networks but did not identify robust evidence on their association with safety-related outcomes.