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.

Structured handoffs support appropriate communication between teams or departments when transferring responsibility for care. This meta-analysis aimed to determine if structured, standardized post-operative anesthesia handoffs improved provider, patient, organizational and handoff outcomes. Postoperative outcomes moved in a generally positive direction when compared with non-standardized handoffs. The authors suggest additional research into pre- and intra-operative handoffs is needed.

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.

Intraoperative handoffs between anesthesiologists are frequently necessary but are not without risk. This systematic review of 14 studies of intraoperative handoffs and handoff tools found that use of handoff tools has a positive impact on patient safety. Additional research is needed around design and implementation of tools, particularly the use of electronic health records to record handoffs.  

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.

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.  

Handoffs are essential to communicating important information and preventing adverse patient care outcomes.  This qualitative study explored how information about ICU patients’ family members is included in handovers. Findings suggest that written documentation about the family is inadequate and poorly structured and there is a need for user-friendly handoff tools that include information on patients’ family members.

This systematic review explored the different approaches taken by the United States and the United Kingdom to implement crew resource management (CRM) training. CRM in the United Kingdom had an emphasis on physicians and focused on skills outcomes using pre- and post-training questionnaires, whereas CRM in the United States focused on behavior outcomes and nontechnical skills utilizing multidisciplinary teams.  

Using ethnographic methods and resilient healthcare principles (described as systems that anticipate future demands, respond to current demands, monitor for emergent problems and learn from results, both positive and negative), the researchers interviewed and observed staff in emergency departments (EDs) and geriatric wards in one teaching hospital in London to identify system vulnerabilities to target with quality improvement interventions. The observations and interviews revealed difficulties with discharge planning and information integration as priority areas.

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.

Care transitions between hospitals and community settings have been identified as a source of negative patient safety outcomes, such as medication errors or other adverse events. This systematic review focused on transitions of care within hospitals (such as within the same unit or between units) and found two studies demonstrating that the risk of adverse events - such as medication errors, infections or falls - increased as patients experienced three or more transfers. A prior PSNet WebM&M also discussed medication errors that can arise during transitions between hospital units.