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This quarterly commentary explores a wide range of subjects associated with patient safety, such as the impact of disruptive behavior on teams, the value of apologies, and safety challenges due to COVID-19. Older materials are available online for free.

Incomplete nursing care is known to affect care quality and safety. This special issue documents the global problem of missed or rationed nursing care in a variety of settings and countries. Articles featured in this special issue examine systemic issues, explore interventions, and evaluate measurement tools.

Patient safety has been described as an unmet need in physician training. This special issue covers areas of focus for a patient safety curriculum drawn from experience in the German medical education system. Topics covered include human error, blame, and responsibility. Articles also review the epidemiology of common problems such as medication safety, organizational contributors to failure, and diagnostic error.

The Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human, marked the founding of the patient safety field. This special issue of Health Affairs, published 20 years after that report, highlights achievements and progress to date. One implementation study of evidence-based surgical safety checklists demonstrated that leadership involvement, intensive activities, and engagement of frontline staff are all critical to successful adoption of safety practices. Another study demonstrated that communication-and-resolution programs either decreased or did not affect malpractice costs, providing further support for implementing such programs. Experts describe the critical role of human factors engineering in patient safety and outline how to enhance the use of these methods. The concluding editorial by David Bates and Hardeep Singh points to progress in reducing hospital-acquired infections and improving medication safety in acute care settings and highlights remaining gaps in the areas of outpatient care, diagnostic errors, and electronic health record safety. In the related information, the Moore Foundation provides free access to five articles in this special issue.

Radiologists play a critical role in safe diagnostic imaging and communication of test results. Articles in this special issue explore clinical and system factors that can contribute to potential failure in radiology practice. Topics covered include the need for improvements in documentation and the radiologist's role in reducing delay, uncertainty, and miscommunication.

Handoff processes are known to carry risks of communication errors. This special issue focuses on transfers involving anesthesia care. Articles review different types of handoffs, characteristics of an effective handoff, challenges of implementing a handoff improvement collaborative, and strategies to reduce distraction in the operating room.

Articles in this special issue provide insights into how human error can affect the safety of oral and maxillofacial surgery, a primarily ambulatory environment. The authors cover topics such as simulation training, wrong-site surgery, and the safety of office-based anesthesia.

Articles in this special supplement explore research commissioned by National Institute for Health Research in the United Kingdom to address four patient safety research gaps: how organizational culture and context influence evaluations of interventions, organizational boundaries that affect handovers and other aspects of care, the role of the patient in safety improvement, and the economic costs and benefits of safety interventions.

This special issue includes articles that discuss the safety of home-based medical care.