Minoritized and vulnerable people often experience delays in care due to systemic biases. This survey study examined the association between perceived discrimination at community pharmacies and foregoing or delaying picking up medications. Participants reported discrimination based on race, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, income, and prescription insurance; those participants were more likely to delay picking up their medications. There was no association with discrimination and foregoing medications.

Emergency room crowding is a persistent factor that degrades safety for patients of all ages. This collection provides background, best practices, and recommendations to reduce emergency department crowding and its negative impact on pediatric care. The publications examine factors that influence crowding and improvement at the input, departmental, and hospital/outpatient stages of emergency care.

Women’s pain has been underestimated compared to men’s pain, and treatments differ based on gender. This commentary revisits the findings from the 2001 article The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain. The authors state progress has been made in the past 20 years, but disparities still exist. Additional research is needed, particularly into chronic pain conditions that are more common in women.

Previous research identified a relationship between anesthesia handoffs and rates of major complications and mortality compared to patients who had the same anesthesiologist throughout their procedure. This retrospective cohort study including over 102,000 patients in Ontario, Canada, explored this relationship among patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Analyses revealed that anesthesia handovers were associated with poorer outcomes (i.e., higher 30-day and one-year mortality rates, longer hospitalizations and intensive care unit stays) compared with patients who had the same anesthesiologist throughout their procedure.

Missed nursing care appears to be associated with higher rates of adverse events. More than 3,600 registered nurses (RNs) were surveyed about missed care during labor and birth in the United States. Three aspects of nursing care were reported missing by respondents: thorough review of prenatal records, missed timely documentation of maternal-fetal assessments, and failure to monitor input and output.

Imaging is an important tool in the pediatric emergency department to guide diagnosis and treatment. In this study, researchers analyzed more than 3.6 million emergency department visits for patients younger than 18 years to evaluate racial and ethnic differences in diagnostic imaging rates. One-third of visits by non-Hispanic white children included imaging, compared with 24% of visits by non-Hispanic Black and 26% of Hispanic children. Given the risks of both radiation exposure and missed diagnoses, strategies to mitigate these disparities must be investigated.

Prior research suggests that functional flexibility has benefits in several industries but may carry patient safety risks in healthcare settings. Using data from a national nursing database, this study examined the effect of unit-level nursing functional flexibility on the incidence of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Results indicate that higher use of functionally flexible nurses was associated with a higher number of pressure ulcers, but this effect was moderated when coworker support within the unit was high.

Building upon earlier work, the authors engaged a technical expert panel to reach consensus on a definition for omissions of care in nursing homes. The article details the terms and concepts included in (and excluded from) the proposed definition, provides examples of omissions of care, intended uses (e.g., to guide quality improvement activities or training and education), and describes the implications of the definition for clinical practice, policy, and research.  

Handoffs between providers can introduce patient safety risks. This systematic review explored the impacts of intraoperative anesthesia handovers (e.g., intraoperative relief, transferring care to an incoming provider) on patient safety outcomes. The researchers pooled four studies and found that an intraoperative anesthesia handover significantly increases the risk of an adverse event by 40%.

Many factors can contribute to early, unplanned readmissions among critical care patients. In this prospective cohort study, adult patients who were discharged directly home after an ICU admission were followed for 8 weeks post-discharge to explore the predictors of adverse events and unplanned return visits to a health care facility. Among 129 patients, there were 39 unplanned return visits. Researchers identified eight predictors of unplanned return visits including prior substance abuse, hepatitis, discharge diagnosis of sepsis, ICU length of stay exceeding 2 days, nursing workload, and leaving against medical advice.  

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.

To support the development of a uniform definition of omissions of care in nursing home settings, the authors conducted a thematic analysis of 34 articles describing existing definitions and found broad agreement that delays or failure of care constitutes an omission of care, but differing views on whether to include adverse events in the definition of omissions of care. The authors reviewed an additional 327 articles reporting adverse events attributable to omissions of care, and identified nineteen event types, with the most common being all-cause mortality, falls, and infections.

As part of a quality improvement initiative to enhance surgical onboarding, the authors used semi-structured interviews with 20 physicians to understand potential areas of risk when a physician begins working in an unfamiliar setting. Qualitative analysis found that three key findings: (1) physicians often receive little to no onboarding when starting to practice in a new setting, which can limit their ability to provide safe care; (2) physicians felt onboarding inadequately fostered strong interpersonal relationships among health care teams, which impedes psychological safety and team cohesion, and; (3) physicians noted an increased risk of patient harm during emergency situations in new settings due to lack of understanding of culture, workflow, roles/responsibilities and available equipment.

This systematic review synthesizes the evidence from 14 studies on medication reconciliation in cancer patients. While the majority of studies did not include a contemporaneous comparison group, they did report that medication reconciliation led to medication error identification (most frequently drug omissions, additions or dosage errors) in up to 88-95% of patients.

Project RED re-engineered discharge with the goal of reducing preventable readmissions. This report summarizes an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality project to transfer the Project RED experience to the primary care environment. Areas of focus included enhancing the team leader role of primary care physicians in post-discharge care.

The authors surveyed over 4,000 care aids from 93 urban nursing homes in Western Canada to assess the association of work environment with missed and rushed essential care tasks. During their most recent shift, over half of care aids (57.4%) reported missing at least one essential care task and two-thirds (65.4%) reported rushing at least one essential care task. Work environments with better work culture and more effective leadership were associated with fewer missed or rushed care tasks.

Trauma patients are particularly vulnerable to medication errors due to the severity of their injuries and the multiple handoffs and transitions often occurring during their hospital stay. This article reviewed existing medication reconciliation strategies and found that many have poor accuracy, can be costly and time-consuming, and may not be applicable to a trauma population.  The authors comment on the urgent need for research supporting safe and efficient medication reconciliation in trauma patients.