Surgical never events are rare but devastating for patients. Using machine learning, this study identified 24 contributing factors to two types of surgical never events - wrong site surgery and retained items. Communication, the number and type of staff present, and the type and length of surgery were identified contributing factors.

If reported, near misses – also called “good catches” – present opportunities for healthcare organizations to learn about potential errors, identify system improvements, and improve safety culture. This mixed-methods study including 199 nurses, who worked in COVID-19 units, found that intent to report near misses was high (78%) but follow-through on reporting was low (20%). Qualitative analyses highlight the role that personnel/physical/mental overload, poor departmental organization, and fear of punitive measures play in underreporting near-miss events.

Wrong-patient transfusion errors can lead to serious patient harm. This case report describes a blood transfusion error and summarizes the systems issues that emerged during the root case analysis, as well as the corrective steps implemented by the hospital to prevent future transfusion errors. A previous Spotlight Case featured a near-miss transfusion error and strategies for ensuring safe transfusion practices.

Strong patient safety culture is a cornerstone to sustained safety improvements. This cross-sectional study explored nurses’ perceptions about patient safety culture. Identified areas of strength included non-punitive responses to errors and teamwork, and areas for improvement focused on supervisor and manager expectations, responses, and actions to promote safety and open communication. The authors highlight the importance of measuring patient safety culture in order to improve hospitals’ patient safety improvement practices, overall performance and quality of healthcare delivery.

A systems approach provides a framework to analyze errors and improve safety. This study uses the Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) to analyze risks related to pediatric sepsis treatment process. Fifty-four safety recommendations were identified, the majority of which were organizational factors (e.g., communication, organizational culture).

Patient suicide in all settings is considered a never event. Nurses caring for the patient may experience negative psychological symptoms following inpatient suicide. This review identified five themes based on nurses’ psychological experiences: emotional experience, cognitive experience, coping strategies, self-reflection, and impact on self and practice. Hospital administrators should develop education and support programs to help nurses cope in the aftermath of inpatient suicide.  

This study used the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on safety culture at a large UK teaching hospital compared to baseline scores collected in 2017. Overall, respondents reported more positive perceptions of safety; training and support for redeployment were associated with higher perceptions of safety. However, the analysis identified a significant decrease in error reporting after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article describes the implementation of a hospital-wide patient safety strategy aimed at reducing hospital-wide adverse events at a single large hospital in Singapore. The strategy included establishing interdisciplinary patient safety teams to identify areas of preventable harm, determine root causes, improve departmental accountability, and leveraging simulation training. Over a 7-year period, adverse event rates decreased significantly (as did the incidence of preventable adverse events and the incidence of events resulting in permanent harm, the use of life-sustaining interventions, or death.

In this prospective study involving 301 older patients admitted to 3 hospitals, researchers used the STOPP and START criteria to identify inappropriate prescribing and adverse drug events. Inappropriate prescribing was detected in 59% of patients and potentially inappropriate medications in 35% of patients. The use of inappropriate medications was associated with an increased odds of an adverse drug event.

This retrospective study sought to determine whether timely diagnosis of the site of infection affected in-hospital mortality for sepsis. Investigators found that patients whose infection site was misdiagnosed on admission had more than twofold greater odds of dying in the hospital compared to those with the correct infection site diagnosed on admission. These results reinforce the importance of correct and timely diagnosis for sepsis outcomes.

Underreporting of safety events and near misses in the health care setting has been well described and is one of the challenges in using data from incident reporting systems to measure safety. Researchers surveyed nursing students and clinical instructors to identify barriers to reporting and found that fear of negative consequences was a major factor.

Patient engagement in safety is considered a best practice and a National Patient Safety Goal, but less is known about patients' perceptions regarding this topic. In this survey study involving 1445 patients in Sweden, researchers found that more than 80% of respondents felt comfortable directing questions to doctors and nurses. Patients who had filed a formal complaint reporting a safety concern were found to believe with greater certainty that the patient perspective can improve the safety of care.

Trigger tools and incident reporting are widely utilized methods for detecting harm in health care. The most useful method for capturing safety events in the emergency department remains unknown. In this prospective observational study, researchers assessed a monitoring system designed to detect adverse events in the emergency department of an academic medical center over a 1-year period. The system included two event reporting methods and five trigger tools. Of the 285 adverse events identified during the study period, 77.2% were captured by reporting systems, 26% by trigger tools, and 3.2% by both approaches. In keeping with prior research, the authors conclude that the use of a combination of methods for capturing harm is more effective than the use of a singular approach. A past PSNet perspective highlighted the importance of feedback with regard to incident reporting.

This mixed-methods study examined the usability of a mobile application for reporting medication errors at a referral hospital in Malaysia. Usability improved over each of the three cycles of testing and iterative redesign, but physician and nurse testers expressed concern about whether the safety culture supported reporting.

This meta-analysis sought to identify the prevalence of hospital admissions attributed to nonadherence to medications. There was significant heterogeneity among the included studies. Researchers found that about 1% to 10% of hospital admissions are due to nonadherence to medications in the outpatient setting and are therefore preventable.

Autopsies are an underutilized tool for identifying diagnostic errors. Researchers evaluated 117 autopsies for patients in Shanghai whose cause of death was disputed or required third-party investigation. Diagnostic errors that would have altered treatment or survival were found in nearly 61%. This number is higher than estimates from a previous systematic review, likely because all patients in this sample had a disputed cause of death.

This direct observation study of emergency physicians found that interruptions, multitasking, and poor sleep were associated with making more medication prescribing errors. These results add to the evidence that clinical environments prone to interruptions may pose a safety risk.

Research has shown that Joint Commission accreditation is associated with higher quality care. In this retrospective study, investigators compared prescribing errors and medication administration errors among pediatric ward patients and pediatric emergency department patients before and during implementation of the Joint Commission International accreditation program. Although they found a significant reduction in prescribing errors, medication administration errors did not decrease.

Failure to detect abnormalities during testing can lead to missed or delayed diagnoses. In this retrospective observational study, investigators found that nearly 20% of colonoscopies that needed to be repeated within 6 months had an undetected abnormal finding—a polyp—that was not initially detected. The authors caution that there is significant risk of missing abnormal findings on colonoscopy.