Maternal and newborn safety is challenged during cesarean delivery due to the complexities of the practice. This guideline recommends specific checklist elements to direct coordination and communication between the two teams engaged in cesarean deliveries. The guideline provides a sample checklist and steps for its implementation.

A variety of biases can reduce the effectiveness and safety of care. This commentary focuses on racial bias and highlights its deleterious impact on maternity care and maternal safety. The authors suggest tactics to improve listening, implicit bias acknowledgement and data standardization as strategies to counteract the trend.

Pharmacists working with surgical teams bring distinct safety context, expertise, and process awareness to perioperative care. These guidelines outline how pharmacists can help reduce medication errors before, during, and after surgery. Perioperative pharmacists can enhance communication, medication histories, and process reliability.

Potential deterioration of older surgeons' technical performance is a patient safety concern. This guidance developed from a Society of Surgical Chairs panel discussion puts forth several steps to manage the transition of aging surgeons. Recommendations include mandatory cognitive and psychomotor testing for surgeons age 65 and older, respectful consideration of the financial and emotional concerns of aging surgeons, and lifelong mentoring around the transition from clinical to nonclinical roles. The authors anticipate that such initiatives will prompt thoughtful support for aging surgeons that ensures patient safety. In an accompanying editorial, an older physician supports mandatory testing and suggests individual-level steps to address aging as a surgeon, including healthy lifestyle and financial habits.

Surgical site infections are a persistent and costly challenge to patient safety. These guidelines provide recommendations to reduce this common hospital-acquired condition, including policies for surgeon attire, hand hygiene, and equipment sterilization.

Although checklist implementation as a safety strategy has achieved some success, it has also faced scrutiny. This magazine article discusses a statewide checklist effort that tested a structured initiative for engaging hospitals in utilizing a pre-surgical checklist in their operating rooms.

This report analyzed Medicare claims data on 27 types of procedures to develop surgical safety ratings of hospitals by state.