The PSNet Collection

Open Notes shines light on errors in patient medical records — will the new rule lead to a flood of correction requests?

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Clark C. MedPage Today. September 14, 2021.

Patients who have access to their records often find errors that need to be corrected. This story highlights recent US policy changes requiring patient access to their records and explores the impact that requests for changes could have on getting records fixed to ensure accurate information is available to inform future care decisions.

Unite for Safe Care.

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Patient Safety Movement. September 17, 2021.

Patient safety is a global challenge for the health care community. This webinar coincided with World Patient Safety Day and presented two tracks for both the profession and the public that highlighted issues impacting maternal care safety and high reliability. Those who have lost their lives to medical error were also honored during the event. The session speakers included Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, MSc, Jeff Brady, MD, and Albert Wu, MD.

How medical jargon can make COVID health disparities even worse.

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Kritz F. Shots. National Public Radio; May 24, 2021.

Health literacy efforts address challenges related to both language and effective communication tactics. This story discussed how lack of language and information clarity reduced patient education effectiveness during the pandemic and highlights several efforts to address them including information product translation services.

Pandemic imperiled non-English speakers more than others.

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Bebinger M. WBUR and Kaiser Health News. April 27, 2021.

Non-English-speaking patients experience barriers to safely navigating the American healthcare system. This story discusses the impact that language and disparities had on care during the pandemic at one health system, and shares outreach communication and translation strategies to improve care safety.

Endometriosis affects 1 out of 10 women like me. Yet it often takes a decade to get diagnosed.

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Peikoff L. NBC News. March 31, 2021.

Patients with endometriosis often experience care delays and misdiagnoses that contribute to harm. This news story discusses a patient’s experience with common contributors to delay that include Insufficient clinical knowledge of the disease and a lack of uniform treatment guidance.

7 ways to prevent medical errors.

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Caceres V. US News World Report. March 1, 2021.

Patients and families have an important role in reducing potential for error and harm. This article highlights a set of tactics for patients to enhance the safety of their care that include preparing for doctor’s appointments, asking questions and seeking second opinions.

5 pandemic mistakes we keep repeating. We can learn from our failures.

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Zeynep Tufekci. The Atlantic. February 26, 2021

Failures in communication have impacts on patients, teams, organizations and society. This article discusses five weaknesses in pandemic messaging that were counterproductive including use of shaming instead of empathy to engage the public, lack of detail on suggested strategies and insufficient advice to support public adoption of harm reduction activities.

A woman’s laborious search uncovered the probable cause of her searing abdominal pain. Getting a doctor to help was much harder.

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Boodman SG. Washington Post. February 20, 2021.

Difficult diagnostic journeys are compounded by lack of clinician empathy, bias awareness, and critical thinking. This piece shares the story of a patient whose efforts to identify the cause of her pain were hampered by heuristics, premature closure, and poor patient relationship building.

‘No one is listening to us’.

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Yong E. The Atlantic. November 13, 2020.

Stressful working conditions are known to increase the potential for medical mistakes. This article shares the perspectives of acute care staff about the emotional and physical toll they've experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using Twitter to assess patient takes on patient experience.

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Heath S. Patient Engagement HIT. October 29, 2020.

Twitter is evolving as a useful data source for patient safety. This news story discusses an examination of public use of a patient-complaint hashtag that recorded patient experiences of misdiagnosis, disrespect and miscommunication that contributed to poor relations with physicians, medical errors, and harm.

Delay or avoidance of medical care because of COVID-19-related concerns--United States, June 2020.

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Czeisler MÉ, Marynak K, Clarke KEN, et al. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020;69:1250-1257.

This nationwide survey of U.S. adults found that many respondents (40.9%) have avoided routine, urgent and emergent medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Avoidance of urgent or emergency care was significantly higher among unpaid caregivers for adults; persons with underlying medical conditions; persons with health insurance; non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, or Latino adults; young adults; and persons with disabilities.

Without an 'ounce of empathy': their stories show the dangers of being Black and pregnant.

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Ramaswamy SV. Rockland/Westchester Journal News. September 9, 2020.

Implicit and explicit biases affect many facets of the health care delivery system. This story shares African-American patient experiences with bias that reduced the safety of maternity care.

Doctors turned my sister away; less than two years later she died of cervical cancer.

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Harvey-Jenner C. Cosmopolitan. August 27, 2020.

Implicit biases are known to impact effective diagnosis. This story highlights how dismissed concerns resulted in a delay in cancer diagnosis that contributed to the death of a young woman.

Avoiding care during the pandemic could mean life or death.

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Glionna JM. Kaiser Health News. July 31, 2020.

The reluctance of patients to seek routine health care services due to the COVID-19 pandemic is a recognized concern. This article shares data that illustrates the potential public health impact of this unreceived care over time.

Missed and delayed diagnoses of non-COVID conditions--collateral harm from a pandemic.

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Carr S. ImproveDx. 2020;7:1-5.

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted patient care seeking behaviors. This article discusses this phenomenon and its impact on the timing of diagnosis due to fear of contracting COVID-19 or threats resulting from the economic shutdown implemented to reduce spread of the virus.

A nursing home’s 64-day Covid siege: ‘They’re all going to die’.

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Barker K. New York Times. 2020;June 10.

This feature story describes the COVID-19 experience at one nursing home and discusses how the infection progressed through the institution and challenged effective care management. Family perceptions of process and care problems provide important insights for improvement.

Second opinions improve healthcare outcomes and reduce costs.

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Hébert AR. Employee Benefit News. 2020;June 8.

Second opinions are a strategy for reducing diagnostic or treatment errors. This article outlines reasons why patients seek additional expert opinion when determining a course of action and discusses non-clinical benefits of the practice.

Patient Safety Movement Foundation.

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This organization shares best practices to align and optimize efforts toward eliminating patient harm by the year 2030. The Foundation supports several awareness initiatives to drive improvements associated with its strategic aims that include promoting transparency, realigning safer care incentives, and informing patients and families about patient safety.

Hospital workers complain of minimal disclosure after COVID exposures.

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Gold J, Hawryluk M. Kaiser Health News. May 13, 2020.

A successful safety culture is consistently evident across all areas of a hospital not only in clinical care units. This article highlights inconsistencies in COVID-19 infection communications across organizations and the negative impact on staff working to keep themselves, patients and hospital visitors safe.

I can't turn my brain off.

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Hoffman J. New York Times. May 16, 2020.

Health care worker stress is a known contributor to disruptive behavior, error and clinician suicide. This story discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychological strain in clinicians and highlights peer support and other techniques to mitigate its negative effects.

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