The PSNet Collection

The PSNet Collection: All Content

The AHRQ PSNet Collection comprises an extensive selection of resources relevant to the patient safety community. These resources come in a variety of formats, including literature, research, tools, and Web sites. Resources are identified using the National Library of Medicine’s Medline database, various news and content aggregators, and the expertise of the AHRQ PSNet editorial and technical teams.

Curated Libraries

Patient as a Team Member in Clinical Care

October 23, 2023

This curated library highlights concepts associated with the patient as a partner for safety at the team level directly connected to personal clinical encounters.

Just a Cup of Tea – an Introduction to the SEIPS Framework.

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Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals. Epsom, UK: National Health Service; March 21, 2023.

The Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) framework is an established human factors-based approach to designing care system improvements. This video introduces the concepts behind SEIPS and uses an everyday non-clinical activity to illustrate its use for a broad audience to identify problems.

Curated Libraries

Implementation of Patient Safety Projects Curated Library

May 4, 2023

The implementation of effective patient safety initiatives is challenging due to the complexity of the health care environment. This curated library shares resources summarizing overarching ideas and strategies that can aid in successful program execution, establishment, and sustainability.

Curated Libraries

Value and Patient Safety

March 8, 2023

Value as an element of patient safety is emerging as an approach to prioritize and evaluate improvement actions. This library highlights resources that explore the business case for cost effective, efficient and impactful efforts to reduce medical errors.

Implementing human factors in anaesthesia: guidance for clinicians, departments and hospitals: Guidelines from the Difficult Airway Society and the Association of Anaesthetists.

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Kelly FE, Frerk C, Bailey CR, et al. Anaesthesia. 2023;78:458-478.

Human factors engineering has the potential to mitigate failures by designing workspaces and processes to prevent errors from occurring. This guidance uses the hierarchy of controls framework to organize human-factors recommendations focusing on the design of anesthesia environments and equipment to infuse protections into care service.

Curated Libraries

Diagnostic Safety

October 10, 2022

Selected PSNet materials for a general safety audience focusing on improvements in the diagnostic process and the strategies that support them to prevent diagnostic errors from harming patients.

Solutions from Professional Regulation and Beyond.

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Safer Care for All. London, England: Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care; 2022.

Dedicated leadership is an important component to examine and address challenges to safety across a system. This report outlines a process to reduce the complexity of care across the United Kingdom through the establishment of offices to address inequity, emerging risk regulation, workforce issues, accountability, and lack of trust in the system.

Final Report of the Ockenden Review.

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London UK: Crown Copyright; March 30, 2022. ISBN: 9781528632294.

Maternal and baby harm in healthcare is a sentinel event manifested by systemic failure. This report serves as the final conclusions of an investigation into 250 cases at a National Health System (NHS) trust. The authors share overarching system improvement suggestions and high-priority recommendations to initiate NHS maternity care improvement.

Curated Libraries

Medication/Drug Errors

January 14, 2022

The medication-use process is highly complex with many steps and risk points for error, and those errors are a key target for improving safety. This Library reflects a curated selection of PSNet content focused on medication and drug errors. Included resources explore understanding harms from preventable medication use, medication safety...

Safety, Equity and Engagement in Maternity Services.

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Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Care Quality Commission; September 2021.

The safety of maternity care is threatened by inequity. This report analyzes a set of United Kingdom investigation reports to identify issues affecting maternity care to determine their prevalence elsewhere in the system. Problems identified include poor leadership and teamwork, as well as learning and cross-service collaboration.

A Thematic Analysis of HSIB's First 22 Investigations.

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Farnborough, UK: Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch; September 9, 2021.

In-depth failure investigations provide improvement insights for individuals and organizations alike. This report analyzes a collection of UK National Health Service incident examinations and provides recommendations for improvement on themes related to care transitions and access, decision making, communication, and point-of-care activity.

Curated Libraries

Maternal Safety

September 13, 2021

Ensuring maternal safety is a patient safety priority. This library reflects a curated selection of PSNet content focused on improving maternal safety. Included resources explore strategies with the potential to improve maternal care delivery and outcomes, such as high reliability, collaborative initiatives, teamwork, and trigger tools.

The Safety of Maternity Services in England.

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Fourth Report of Session 2021–22. House of Commons Health Committee. London, England: The Stationery Office; July 6, 2021. Publication HC 19.

High-profile failures motivate examination and change of existing services. This report builds on maternity care failures in National Health Service trusts to recommend needed changes in learning from failure to effectively support clinicians providing maternity care, provide patient-centered care to mothers and babies, and learn from untoward incidents to enhance care safety.

Patient Safety Recommendations for COVID-19 Epidemic Outbreak: 3.0

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La Regina M, Tanzini M, Venneri F, et al for the Italian Network for Health Safety. Dublin, Ireland: International Society for Quality in Health Care; 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a rapidly evolving situation that requires a system orientation to diagnosis, management and post-acute care to keep clinicians, patients, families and communities safe. This set of recommendations is anchored on a human factors approach to provide overarching direction to design systems and approaches to respond to the virus. The recommendations focus on team communication and organizational culture; the diagnostic process; patient and family engagement to reduce spread; hospital, pediatric, and maternity processes and treatments; triage decision ethics; discharge communications; home isolation; psychological safety of staff and patients, and; outcome measures. An appendix covers drug interactions and adverse effects for medications used to treat this patient population. The freely-available full text document will be updated appropriately as Italy continues to respond, learn and amend its approach during the outbreak.

The Life and Death of Elizabeth Dixon: A Catalyst for Change.

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Missed diagnosis of a dangerous condition in utero, treatment errors, lack of response to concerns raised, and inadequate clinician expertise were among the contributing factors identified in this analysis of the death of a special needs infant at home. The 12 recommendations stemming from the investigation include improvements in disclosure support, clinician communication across facilities, and assignment of accountability when false and misleading statements are made during investigations.

Making Complaints Count: Supporting Complaints Handling in the NHS and UK Government Departments.

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London, UK: The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman; July 15, 2020. ISBN 9781528620666.

Patient and family complaints can provide insights into system weaknesses if managed effectively. This report examined complaint handling at the United Kingdom National Health Service. The analysis found that lack of training, consistency and learning orientation reduced the effectiveness of the effort.

Patient Safety

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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Organizations worldwide are focusing efforts on reducing the conditions that contribute to medical error. This website provides a collection of reports and other resources that cover activities and concerns of the 37 member countries active in the organization to address universal challenges to patient safety.

Culture as a Cure: Assessments of Patient Safety Culture in OECD Countries.

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de Bienassisi K, Kristensenii S, Burtscheri M, et al for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Paris, France: OECD Publishing; 2020. OECD Health Working Papers, No. 119.

The assessment of patient safety culture is critical for understanding the success of organizational efforts to provide a foundation for improvement work. This report examines tools used in a variety of countries to assess culture and underscores the value that the assessment of culture can bring to understanding problems and implementing sustainable improvements.

Independent Mortality Review of Cardiac Surgery at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

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NHS Improvement. Independent Mortality Review of Cardiac Surgery at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. NHS England. March 2020.

In-depth incident investigations provide details of care process examinations to motivate learning and improvement. This report examines cardiac surgery patient mortality at a National Health Service Trust over a 5-year period. It highlights weakness in professionalism at the individual and organization level as a contributor to the preventable patient deaths catalogued over that time.

Inadvertent Administration of an Oral Liquid Medicine into a Vein.

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Farnborough, UK; Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch: April 2019.

Wrong route medication administration is a never event. This report examined the context, organizational and human factors that contributed to the accidental intravenous administration of an oral solution into a pediatric patient. Safety recommendations include medication safety training, standardized administration processes, and elevation of the medication safety officer role.

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