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.

Search All Content

Clear all filter(s)

Displaying 1 - 20 of 168 Results

Curated Libraries

Patient as a Team Member in Clinical Care

October 23, 2023

This curated library highlights concepts associated with the patient as a partner for safety at the team level directly connected to personal clinical encounters.

Managing near-miss reporting in hospitals: the dynamics between staff members’ willingness to report and management’s handling of near-miss events.

Save to Library

Caspi H, Perlman Y, Westreich S. Safety Sci. 2023;164:106147.

Near-misses or “good catches” are incidents that could have resulted in patient harm but did not due to it being caught at the last minute or through sheer luck. Reporting near-misses can help organizations learn and enact changes if necessary, but near-misses are not frequently reported. This study presents enablers and barriers to reporting near-misses.

Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report.

Save to Library

Covid Crisis Group. New York: Public Affairs; 2023. ISBN‏: ‎9781541703803.

The transfer of failure experiences to generate learning and improve service is a complicated responsibility. This book examines breakdowns in the US response to the COVID-19 epidemic to understand causes of the problems, in order to better prepare health care, government, and public health systems for future pandemics. It also discusses what successes were achieved and how to capitalize on those improvements.

Towards a unified model of accident causation: refining and validating the systems thinking safety tenets.

Save to Library

Salmon PM, Hulme A, Walker GH, et al. Ergonomics. 2023;66:644-657.

Systems thinking concepts are used by healthcare organizations to encourage learning from failures and identifying solutions to complex patient safety problems. This article outlines a refined and validated set of systems thinking tenets and discusses how they can be used to proactively identify threats to patient safety.

Curated Libraries

Implementation of Patient Safety Projects Curated Library

May 4, 2023

The implementation of effective patient safety initiatives is challenging due to the complexity of the health care environment. This curated library shares resources summarizing overarching ideas and strategies that can aid in successful program execution, establishment, and sustainability.

More than algorithms: an analysis of safety events involving ML-enabled medical devices reported to the FDA.

Save to Library

Lyell D, Wang Y, Coiera E, et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2023;30:1227-1236.

Patients and healthcare providers rely on devices that use artificial intelligence or machine learning in diagnostics, treatment, and monitoring. This study utilizes adverse event reports submitted to the FDA's Manufacturer and Use Facility Device Experience (MAUDE) database for machine learning-enabled devices. Mammography was implicated in 69% of reports, and the majority were near-miss events.

Improving Diagnostic Safety and Quality

Save to Library

Perspective on Safety April 26, 2023

Throughout 2022, AHRQ PSNet has shared research that elucidates the complex nature of misdiagnosis and diagnostic safety. This Year in Review explores recent work in diagnostic safety and ways that greater safety may be promoted using tools developed to improve diagnostic practices.

Patient Safety Indicators.

Save to Library

Patient Safety Primer April 26, 2023

Patient safety indicators are tools used to assess the frequency, severity, and impact of potential harms in health care, both within health care organizations and at the health care system, regional, and national levels. This primer describes how patient safety indicators are applied in acute, ambulatory, and post-acute care settings and how these indicators are being incorporated into new federal healthcare quality measurement initiatives.

Curated Libraries

Value and Patient Safety

March 8, 2023

Value as an element of patient safety is emerging as an approach to prioritize and evaluate improvement actions. This library highlights resources that explore the business case for cost effective, efficient and impactful efforts to reduce medical errors.

Crisis in the Lakeshore Hospital ER.

Save to Library

Derfel A. Montreal Gazette. February 24- March 1, 2023

Emergency room failures are often rooted in system weaknesses. This series examines six patient deaths associated with emergency care that, while concerns were raised by nursing staff, have not been explored to initiate improvements at the facility. Factors contributing to the deaths discussed include nurse shortages, inconsistent oversight, and poor training.

National statutory reporting: not even ticking the boxes? The quality of 'Learning from Deaths' reporting in quality accounts within the NHS in England 2017-2020.

Save to Library

Brummell Z, Braun D, Hussein Z, et al. BMJ Open Qual. 2023;12:e002092.

Reporting adverse events and lessons learned can help improve patient safety beyond the original impacted facility, but low-quality reports can hinder learning. This study describes the quality of reports submitted during the first three years of England’s mandatory Learning from Deaths (LfD) program. While up to half of National Health Service (NHS) hospital trusts submitted data for all six regulatory statutes, a small minority did not submit any data. Three years in, the identification, reporting, and investigation of deaths has improved, but evidence of improved patient safety is still lacking.

Nursing student errors and near misses: three years of data.

Save to Library

Silvestre JH, Spector ND. J Nurs Educ. 2023;62:12-19.

Learning from mistakes is an essential component of medical and nursing education. This retrospective study examined medical errors and near-misses committed by nursing students at more than 200 prelicensure programs. Of the 1,042 errors and near-misses reported, medication errors were most common (59%). Three primary contributing factors to errors and near-miss events were identified – (1) not checking patient identification, (2) not checking a patient’s allergy status, and (3) not following the “rights” of medication administration.

Is anybody 'Learning' from deaths? Sequential content and reflexive thematic analysis of national statutory reporting within the NHS in England 2017-2020.

Save to Library

Brummell Z, Braun D, Hussein Z, et al. BMJ Open Qual. 2023;12:e002093.

In 2017, England’s National Health Service (NHS) implemented the Learning from Deaths program which requires NHS Secondary Care Trusts (NSCT) to report, investigate, and learn from potentially preventable deaths. This study focuses on what NCSTs learned during the first three years of the program, the actions taken in response and their impact, and engagement with Learning from Deaths. Trusts appear to have varied understanding and use of the term ‘learning’ and not all specified the impact their actions had on patient safety.

Toward the translation of systems thinking methods in patient safety practice: assessing the validity of Net-HARMS and AcciMap.

Save to Library

Salmon PM, King B, Hulme A, et al. Safety Sci. 2022;159:106003.

Organizations are encouraged to proactively identify patient safety risks and learn from failures. This article describes validity testing of systems-thinking risk assessment (Net-HARMS) to identify risks associated with patient medication administration and an accident analysis method (AcciMap) to analyze a medication administration error.

Curated Libraries

Diagnostic Errors Case Studies

January 19, 2023

The Primary-Care Research in Diagnosis Errors (PRIDE) Learning Network was a Boston-based national effort to improve diagnostic safety. Hosted by the State of Massachusetts’ Betsy Lehman Center, it was led by the Harvard Brigham and Women’s Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. ...

Support for healthcare workers and patients after medical error through mutual healing: another step towards patient safety.

Save to Library

Aubin DL, Soprovich A, Diaz Carvallo F, et al. BMJ Open Qual. 2022;11:e002004.

Healthcare workers (HCW) and patients can experience negative psychological impacts following medical error; the negative impact can be compounded when workers and patients are prevented from processing the error. This study explored interactions between patients/families and HCWs following a medical error, highlighting barriers to communication, as well as the need for training and peer support for HCWs. Importantly, HCW and patients/families expressed feeling empathy towards the other and stressed that open communication can lead to healing for some.

Using community detection techniques to identify themes in COVID-19-related patient safety event reports.

Save to Library

Boxley C, Krevat SA, Sengupta S, et al. J Patient Saf. 2022;18:e1196-e1202.

COVID-19 changed the way care is delivered to hospitalized patients and resulted in new categories and themes in patient safety reporting. This study used machine learning to group of more than 2,000 patient safety event (PSE) reports into eight clinically relevant themes, including testing delays, diagnostic errors, pressure ulcers, and falls.

'Reading the Signals' : Maternity and Neonatal Services in East Kent – the Report of the Independent Investigation.

Save to Library

Kirkup B. Department of Health and Social Care. London, England: Crown Copyright; 2022. ISBN: 9781528636759.

Maternity care is beset with challenges that reduce safety. This analysis provided insights into improving maternity care in the British National Health Service (NHS) focusing on the need for identification of inadequate performance, enhanced sympathetic care, common purpose in teams, honest response to difficulties and effective outcome measurement.

Scientific view of the global literature on medical error reporting and reporting systems from 1977 to 2021: a bibliometric analysis.

Save to Library

Ünal A, Seren Intepeler Ş. J Patient Saf. 2022;18:e1102-e1108.

Increasing patient safety event reporting is an ongoing priority. This article summarizes the trends in medical error reporting and reporting system research from 1970 to 2021. While the number of publications increased annually, researchers observed a lack of cross-country collaboration on studies evaluating error reporting systems.

Curated Libraries

Diagnostic Safety

October 10, 2022

Selected PSNet materials for a general safety audience focusing on improvements in the diagnostic process and the strategies that support them to prevent diagnostic errors from harming patients.

The PSNet Collection: All Content

Search All Content

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The PSNet Collection: All Content

Search All Content

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue Logged In

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue logged in

New Users to the PSNet site