Patients transitioning from the intensive care unit (ICU) to the general ward are vulnerable to medication errors. This qualitative study included medical staff and clinical pharmacists from hospital wards and ICUs to identify factors that contribute to medication safety or adverse events at times of transition. Lack of communication between provider types (e.g., nurse and pharmacist) and time pressure considerations had negative effects on medication safety. Ward rounds and safety culture had positive effects.

Medication errors and adverse drug events (ADE) are unfortunately common at hospital discharge. This study used the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) in England and Wales to identify contributing causes to medication errors and ADE. Patients over 65 were the most common age group and, of incidents with a stated level of harm, most did not result in any harm. Overall, most incidents occurred at the prescribing stage, but varied by patient age group. Most contributory factors were organizational (e.g., continuity of care between provider types), followed by staff, patient, and equipment factors.

Previous studies have demonstrated health information exchanges (HIE) can improve the quality and safety of care by improving diagnostic concordance and reducing medication errors. This review synthesizes physicians’ and nurses’ perspectives on patient safety related to use of HIE in interorganizational care transitions. Several advantages of and challenges with HIE are detailed.

Electronic health record (EHR) downtime can disrupt patient care and increase risk for medical errors. Semi-structured interviews with healthcare staff and leadership at one large hospital in England illustrate the negative consequences of a three-week downtime of an electronic pathology system on patient experience and safety. The authors propose recommendations for hospitals to consider when preparing for potential technology downtimes.

This international qualitative study explored strategies employed by nurse managers and directors to prevent missed nursing care. Most strategies, including staffing ratios, communication, and empowering nurse leaders, required complex interventions at the system level, indicating missed nursing care is not merely a nursing issue. Nurse managers play a key role in implementing strategies at the nursing and hospital level.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically increased the use of telehealth across various medical specialties.This systematic review did not identify any differences in patient or surgeon satisfaction or patient-reported outcomes with telehealth for orthopedic care delivery as compared to in-person visits.However, the authors note that the included studies did not adequately capture or report safety endpoints, such as complications or missed diagnoses.

Handoffs are essential to communicating important information and preventing adverse patient care outcomes.  This qualitative study explored how information about ICU patients’ family members is included in handovers. Findings suggest that written documentation about the family is inadequate and poorly structured and there is a need for user-friendly handoff tools that include information on patients’ family members.

Based on qualitative data from healthcare professionals and managers at two Norwegian hospitals, this study examined how next-of-kin in cancer care play a role in organizational resilience. Findings show that next-of-kin complement healthcare professionals in the four “potentials” considered essential for resilient performance: potential to respond, potential to monitor, potential to learn, and potential to anticipate.

Researchers analyzed medication errors occurring in the trauma service of a single university hospital in Spain to inform the development and implementation of a set of measures to improve the safety of the pharmacotherapeutic process. The Multidisciplinary Hospital Safety Group proposed improvement measures that intend to involve pharmacists in medication reconciliation, increase the use of medication reconciliation in the emergency and trauma departments, and incorporate protocols and alerts into the electronic prescribing system.

This systematic review explored the different approaches taken by the United States and the United Kingdom to implement crew resource management (CRM) training. CRM in the United Kingdom had an emphasis on physicians and focused on skills outcomes using pre- and post-training questionnaires, whereas CRM in the United States focused on behavior outcomes and nontechnical skills utilizing multidisciplinary teams.  

The author defines ‘work debate spaces’ as organizational spaces that serve as a vehicle for organizational learning, practice changes, and performance improvement. This article discusses the role of formal and informal ‘work debate spaces’ in establishing a culture of safety in critical care settings. Examples of formal and informal spaces include mortality and morbidity (M&M) meetings (formal) and handoffs between shifts (informal).

This study examined patient safety issues stemming from health information technology (HIT)-related information management hazards. The authors identified eleven thematic groups describing such hazards occurring at a systemic level, such as fragmentation of patient information, “information islands” (e.g., nurses and physicians have separate information sets despite the same HIT system), and inadequate information structures (e.g., no drug interaction warning integrated in the chemotherapy prescribing tool).

Using the events at the United Kingdom’s Mid Staffordshire Trust hospital as a case study, the authors discuss the impact of ‘collective denial’ on organizational processes and safety culture. The authors suggest that safeguards allowing for self-reflection and correction be implemented early in the safety reporting process, and that employees be granted power to speak up about safety concerns.

Using ethnographic methods and resilient healthcare principles (described as systems that anticipate future demands, respond to current demands, monitor for emergent problems and learn from results, both positive and negative), the researchers interviewed and observed staff in emergency departments (EDs) and geriatric wards in one teaching hospital in London to identify system vulnerabilities to target with quality improvement interventions. The observations and interviews revealed difficulties with discharge planning and information integration as priority areas.