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.

Little empirical evidence exists assessing the association of different nursing handoff styles with patient outcomes. This retrospective study examined the incidence of falls during nursing handovers performed in designated rooms away from patients (to ensure confidentiality and prevent interruptions and distractions). No differences in the incidence of falls or fall severity during handovers performed away from patients versus non-handover times were identified.

This article discusses the tension between evidence generation from observational studies and rigorous randomized controlled trials to treat COVID-19 and important safety considerations, such as use of unproven therapies.

This position statement shares 11 recommendations drawn from a review of the evidence to improve the safety of pediatric dosing in pre-hospital emergent situations. Suggestions for improvement include use of kilograms as the standard unit of weight, pre-calculated weight-based dosing, and dose-derivation strategies to minimize use of calculations in real time.   

The authors of this article suggest that offering palliative care services earlier should be considered a patient safety issue. They highlight three cases in which patients in Canada requested medical assistance in dying (MAiD). The patients in two of the cases were never offered palliative care services, and this could be considered a medical error – had they been offered palliative care services, they may have changed their mind about MAiD, as did the patient in the third case study.

Prospective observational study examined whether nursing complexity level predicts adverse event risk among patients transferred from the ICU to the discharge ward. In this 13-bed ICU, researchers found that various factors including level of acuity and nursing complexity predated risk of adverse events (AEs); patients who exceeded a predetermined complexity threshold were at 3-times greater risk of AEs.

Reducing opioid prescribing in pain management is a key strategy to address the opioid crisis. This review highlights the unique role of the anesthesiologist in this approach. The authors emphasize preoperative identification of patients at risk for long-term opioid use and suggest organizational, clinical, and research strategies that can be led by anesthesiologists to reduce opioid use.

In this retrospective analysis of Medicaid claims, researchers found that opioid medications are often discontinued abruptly, presumably for safety reasons. Nearly half of patients who had opioids suddenly discontinued or with short tapering lengths experienced an opioid-related emergency department visit and hospitalization, suggesting an unintended consequence of reducing opioid use.

Care for older hospitalized patients can be complex due to multimorbidities and polypharmacy. This review found that restraint use and limiting mobility to prevent falls can result in functional losses in geriatric patients. The authors suggest multidisciplinary approaches to shifting the goals of nursing care to focus on preserving and restoring function in older patients.

The FDA recently raised awareness of the potential risks associated with the use of robotic-assisted surgical devices in mastectomies or cancer-related care. This commentary spotlights how payers, hospitals, and clinicians can prevent harm related to robotic surgical device use. Strategies to improve safety include enhanced credentialing, device-specific training, and informed consent. A WebM&M commentary discussed an incident of harm associated with robotic-assisted surgery.

Patients with chronic pain can experience unintended consequences related to prescription limitation policies implemented to address the opioid epidemic. This commentary offers insights from primary care providers and regulators regarding the difficulty of managing opioid prescriptions to limit misuse while effectively treating pain.

Scheduling overlapping surgeries has raised substantial patient safety concerns. However, research regarding the impact of concurrent surgery on patient outcomes has produced conflicting results. In this multicenter retrospective cohort study, researchers examined the relationship between overlapping surgery and mortality, postoperative complications, and surgery duration for 66,430 surgeries between January 2010 and May 2018. Although overlapping surgery was not significantly associated with an increase in mortality or complications overall, researchers did find a significant association between overlapping surgery and increased length of surgery. An accompanying editorial discusses the role of overlapping surgery in promoting the autonomy of those in surgical training and suggests that further research is needed to settle the debate regarding the impact of overlapping surgery on patient safety.