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Diagnostic errors, including missed diagnoses of adolescent depression, elevated blood pressure, and delayed response to abnormal lab results, are common in pediatric primary care. Building upon previous work, this study used root cause analyses to identify the failure points and contributing factors to these errors. Omitted process steps included failure to screen for adolescent depression, failure to recognize and act on abnormal blood pressure values, and failure to notify families of abnormal lab results. Factors contributing most commonly to these errors were patient volume, inadequate staffing, clinic environment, electronic and written communication, and provider knowledge.

Whether or not word selection during handoffs affects clinician anxiety and diagnostic uncertainty remains unknown. In this study involving medical students, researchers found that use of the word "hypothesis" compared to the word "diagnosis" when describing a hypothetical handoff from the emergency department to the inpatient setting was associated with increased self-reported anxiety due to uncertainty.

Maintaining the quality of teaching on resident rounds has become a challenge in light of new pressures to improve value, as well as changes in the organization of care and in trainee accreditation standards. This commentary describes a rounding process that focuses on enhancing safety culture, engaging patients, and improving diagnostic reasoning as goals to reinforce teamwork activities including huddles, bedside rounds, and diagnostic timeouts. The authors provide information drawn from their evaluation of the program and discuss plans for further research building on their work.

This commentary describes how a shadowing intervention affected medical students' attitudes towards nurses.

This review discusses medication errors and patient safety in the context of geriatrics and offers recommendations to improve safety for elderly patients.

This case study presents the events surrounding the death of a woman admitted to an academic medical center with pancreatitis. The discussion analyzes the sequence of errors that transpired from initial delays in diagnosis and treatment to poor communication and handoffs (the latter is a 2007 National Patient Safety Goal). The authors also explore the common yet unresolved tension in teaching hospitals for attending physicians who must provide appropriate supervision of trainees while also allowing autonomy for growth. This article is the last of a special collection entitled "Quality Grand Rounds," a series of articles published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that explores a range of quality issues and medical errors. An accompanying editorial (available via the link below) by the series editors reflects on the experiences of producing the 13 articles in this collection, the patient safety movement in general, and the importance of sharing these stories as educational tools to drive improvement.