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.

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.

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.