Standardization is a common strategy for preventing practice deviations that can contribute to harm. This tool outlines a three-step process for minimizing the occurrence of wrong-side peripheral nerve blocks that involves preparing for the procedure, stopping to perform a two-person site confirmation, and then administering the block.

Improving teamwork and communication is a continued focus in the hospital setting. This toolkit is designed to help organizations create a culture that embeds teamwork into daily practice routines. Topics covered include team leadership, learning and continuous improvement, clarifying roles, structured communication, and support for raising concerns.

This resource provides newsletters that target concerns associated with spinal pain interventions and offers safety strategies. The collection focuses on three primary areas: procedural contraindications, procedure-related complications, and injectate-related complications such as the safe use of multi-dose and single-dose vials.

Transitions are known to be vulnerable to communication errors. This toolkit focuses on patient transitions between ambulatory care environments and encourages staff to engage patients and families in their care to prevent errors during care transitions.

This toolkit provides information for hospitals to help reduce preventable readmissions among Medicaid patients. Building on hospital experience with utilizing the materials since 2014, this updated guide explains how to determine root causes for readmissions, evaluate existing interventions, develop a set of improvement strategies, and optimize care transition processes.

The AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd edition, can help primary care practices implement improvement actions to reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels.

Infants discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit to home are particularly vulnerable to care coordination errors. This four-component toolkit includes materials to help hospitals implement a coach program to educate providers and families about common communication and health concerns that arise during this transition.

This Web site provides resources to help health systems implement the Multi-Center Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study (MARQUIS) medication reconciliation program. 

This toolkit provides resources to help augment testing processes in ambulatory care settings, including tools for identifying areas of concern and measuring improvements.

Studies have shown that a surprisingly large proportion of hospitalized patients are not aware of their diagnoses or treatment plan and that their preferences are often not taken into account in advanced care planning. This failure to provide patient-centered care indicates a need for increased patient engagement in safety and quality efforts. This toolkit published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is designed to help hospitals develop partnerships with patients around improving safety. Developed with input from clinicians and patients, the guide emphasizes four strategies—working with patients as advisors, improving bedside communication, integrating patients and families into shift changes, and using patient input to improve the discharge process. An AHRQ WebM&M perspective by Dr. Saul Weingart discusses the practical challenges of engaging patients in improvement efforts.

This toolkit provides information to help hospitals implement Project RED, including how to determine goals at the outset and measure project outcomes after implementation.

This tool describes factors that contribute to incomplete handoffs and recommends tactics improve handoff communication.

This toolkit, based on lessons learned from facilities that have implemented the Medications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs (MATCH) initiative, provides strategies to implement and improve medication reconciliation in health care.

This Web site offers a toolkit to improve the safety of handoffs, patient transfers, and post-hospitalization medication use.

This Web site includes information on the Re-Engineered Discharge project (Project RED), which has developed strategies to enhance patient safety by improving the hospital discharge process to reduce readmissions.

This Web site offers information to help patients understand both safety issues and risks involved in radiation therapy.

This column offers advice for consumers on what personal health and medical information to prepare before going to the emergency department.