Staffing shortages are temporarily alleviated with floating or redeployed staff. This qualitative study of intensive care unit (ICU) critical care nurses and floating non-critical care nurses sought to identify the pros and cons of floating nurses, and strategies to improve patient safety. Floating nurses reported concerns surrounding unfamiliarity with the types of patients or locations of equipment. Critical care nurses reported cognitive overload with doing their routine duties plus orienting floating nurses. One recommendation to improve safety is competency-based nursing curriculum and provide floating nurses occasional training/experience in the ICU.

Diagnostic error is a growing area of focus within patient safety. Artificial intelligence has the potential to improve the diagnostic process, both in terms of accuracy and efficiency. In this study, investigators compared the use of automated deep learning algorithms for detecting metastatic disease in stained tissue sections of lymph nodes of women with breast cancer to pathologists' diagnoses. The algorithms were developed by researchers as part of a competition and their performance was assessed on a test set of 129 slides, 49 with metastatic disease and 80 without. A panel of 11 pathologists evaluated the same slides with a 2-hour time limit and one pathologist evaluated the slides without any time constraints. The authors conclude that some of the algorithms demonstrated better diagnostic performance than the pathologists did, but they suggest that further testing in a clinical setting is warranted. An accompanying editorial discusses the potential of artificial intelligence in health care.

Complex care regimens and poor team communication can influence the safety of patients with cancer. This project report describes how an organization used a standardized communication tool to augment physician handovers of oncology patients. The authors utilized plan-do-study-act cycles to refine the process. They found that each adjustment addressed challenges to the use of the tool and over time physician compliance with the process increased.

This pre-post study found that a human factors approach improved blood collection procedures in the emergency department, which is important for preventing adverse events such as transfusion errors. This demonstrates the benefits of applying human factors engineering in patient safety efforts across health care settings.

Diagnosis is a critical area of patient safety. Prior research demonstrates that physicians perceive time pressure as an impediment to diagnosis, but this has not been objectively documented. This educational simulation study examined the ability of internal medicine residents to correctly diagnose written cases with and without time pressure. Residents under time pressure had reduced diagnostic accuracy, and this decrement was more marked for difficult cases. These results demonstrate the benefit of allowing physicians more time for accurate diagnosis, consistent with recent Institute of Medicine recommendations to examine novel models of care and reimbursement to foster diagnostic safety. A recent PSNet interview discussed diagnostic errors and how to reduce them.

Miscommunication during transitions of care can contribute to medication errors. This commentary describes an initiative to involve pharmacy students in care transitions services. Although the authors found that scheduling and training the students for the program was a challenge, 30-day readmission rates were lower for patients who received transitions of care services with pharmacy students versus those who did not.

This prospective study examined 200 hospital nurse handovers. Documentation was missing in nearly half of patients' files, and dosage discrepancies were identified in 23% of cases. Use of strategies that emphasized the input and interaction of the incoming team—such as face-to-face verbal updates with questions—were associated with fewer treatment errors.

Root cause analysis was used to explore contributing factors to both active errors and latent errors in the diagnostic evaluation of trauma patients.