Identifying and classifying adverse events is an important, yet often challenging, component of incident reporting. This article describes the development and testing of a novel Quality Improvement Classification System (QICS) designed to incorporate adverse events in both inpatient and outpatient settings across medical and surgical specialties in order to capture a broader range of outcomes related to patient care, including organizational issues, near-miss events, and expected deviations from ideal outcomes of surgery.

Missed nursing care is a key indicator of patient safety and has been linked to safety climate. Survey responses from 3,429 labor and delivery nurses from 253 hospitals across the United States found an average of 11 of 25 aspects of essential nursing care were occasionally, frequently, or always missed. Higher perceived safety climate was associated with less missed care. The authors discuss the importance of strategies to reduce missed care, such as adequate nurse staffing, ensuring nonpunitive responses to errors, and promoting open communication.

Near-miss incidents present useful learning opportunities but frequently go unreported. This study used a computerized trigger tool to identify near-miss incidents in the emergency department (ED). Results show approximately 23% of ED visits during the 13-month study period included a near-miss incident. This analysis suggests computerized trigger tools can be useful to identify near misses that otherwise go unreported.

Maternal near misses are associated with lower quality of life and poorer outcomes for the pregnant person and their family. In this study, 12 Black women who experienced a maternal near miss describe major contributors. They list communication problems, such as not being believed, their relationship with their provider, and provider discrimination as major contributors.

Retained surgical items (RSI) are a never event, a serious and preventable event. After experiencing a high rate of RSIs, this United States health system implemented a bundle to reduce RSI, improve near-miss reporting, and increase process reliability in operating rooms. The bundle consisted of five elements: surgical stop, surgical debrief, visual counters, imaging, and reporting.

Healthcare professionals involved in a medical error often experience psychological distress. This article describes the validation of a revised version of the Second Victim Experience and Support Tool (SVEST-R), which was expanded to include measures of resilience and desired forms of support.

Infant misidentification or abduction are considered never events. This article discusses the results of a failure mode and effects analysis to identify and eliminate or reduce the risk of infant misidentification or abduction. Twenty-eight failure modes were identified; the highest-ranked items involved concerns for uninvited individuals on the unit, interactions with child-protective services, alarm fatigue, and inadequate identification checks of the infants with mothers.

A retained surgical sharp (RSS) is a never event. Operating room (OR) team members, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses, were surveyed regarding their experiences with actual and near-miss sharps (NMS). While nearly all team members reported experiencing at least one RSS or NMS in the past year, responses to other survey items varied by professional group. Surgeons were less likely to perceive that a sharp had been lost as compared to other OR team members, indicating a potential under-report bias. Improved communication between team members may increase identification, and therefore reporting, of RSS and NMS, to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Incident reporting systems may be underutilized by medical trainees. This article describes a brief, interactive simulation activity to improve identification and reporting of patient safety hazards among medical students and interns.

This commentary presents two cases of near-miss wrong-patient order errors between mother-newborn pairs and discusses the unique threat the postpartum setting presents to electronic order safety. The article highlights opportunities for systems improvement.

This multicenter cluster randomized trial explored the impact of eliminating extended-duration  work schedules (shifts in excess of 24 hours) on serious medical errors made by residents in the pediatric intensive care unit (ICU). The authors found that residents in ICUs which eliminated extended shifts in favor of day and night shifts of 16 hours or less made significantly more serious errors than residents assigned to extended-duration work schedules. The authors observed that the resident-to-patient ratio was higher during schedules which eliminated extended shifts, but also that these results might have been confounded by concurrent increases in workload in ICUs eliminating extended shifts.

The good catch, or near miss, can provide a key learning experience in health care practice. This article discusses the importance of organizational culture in utilizing these experiences as improvement opportunities. The author reviews strategies for nurses to engage in skill development through case review of good catches.

The Joint Commission and National Quality Forum both consider wrong-site, wrong-procedure, and wrong-patient surgeries to be never events. Despite improvement approaches ranging from the Universal Protocol to nonpayment for the procedures themselves and any consequent care, these serious surgical errors continue to occur. This study measured the incidence of incorrect surgeries in Veterans Health Administration medical centers from 2010 to 2017. Surgical patient safety events resulting in harm were rare and declined by more than two-thirds from 2000 to 2017. Dentistry, ophthalmology, and neurosurgery had the highest incidence of in–operating room adverse events. Root cause analysis revealed that 29% of events could have been prevented with a correctly performed time-out. A WebM&M commentary examined an incident involving a wrong-side surgery.

Clinical pharmacist supervision improves medication safety in many health care settings. In this study, pharmacists in a pediatric emergency department (ED) reviewed all discharge prescriptions the day after patients left the ED and contacted prescribers to address safety hazards. Over a 1-year period, pharmacists intervened rarely (0.25% of prescriptions), averted 10 incidents of moderate or major harm, and worked 45 additional minutes per day.

This quality improvement initiative developed and promoted reporting of good catches—recognition of incipient patient safety problems—in the perioperative setting. The authors reported improvement in safety culture scores, as measured by the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, after implementation of the program compared to prior scores.

This study compared direct observation to voluntary reporting for identification of errors and near misses in pediatric surgery. As with prior studies, the team observed underreporting of adverse events and near misses. The authors advocate for systems approaches to enhance reporting.

Case studies of adverse events and near misses provide context to inform improvements. This commentary offers insights from four examples of near misses and highlights strategies such as the use of the 10 rights of drug administration, near-miss reporting, shared accountability for safety, and dedication to learning as drivers for medication safety efforts.

Although using video documentation while providing care is controversial, it has been shown to contribute to error and near miss analysis. This commentary describes how utilizing videos in operating rooms can enhance patient safety and clinician accountability.