Nurse-sensitive outcomes are important indicators of nursing safety. In this retrospective study of 600 patient records from ten Swedish home healthcare organizations, researchers found that 74% of patient safety incidents were classified as nursing-sensitive and that the majority of those events were preventable. The most common types of nursing-sensitive events were falls, pressure injuries, healthcare-associated infections, and incidents related to medication management.

Home healthcare is common among older adults, who are often vulnerable to patient safety events due to factors such as medical complexity. This cross-sectional study of 4,296 Medicare patients examined the relationship between receipt of home healthcare services, perceived gaps in care coordination, and preventable adverse outcomes. The researchers found that home healthcare was not associated with self-reported gaps in care coordination, but was associated with increases in self-reported preventable drug-drug interactions (but not ED visits or hospital admissions).

Unprofessional and disruptive behavior can erode patient safety and safety culture. The Co-Worker Observation System (CORS), a peer-to-peer feedback program previously used with physicians and advance practice providers, was implemented for use with nurses in three hospitals. Reports of unprofessional behavior submitted to the internal reporting system were evaluated by the CORS team, and peer-to-peer feedback was given to the recipient. This pilot study demonstrated that the implementation bundle can be successful with nursing staff.

Organizational pressures sometimes lead to redeployment or task reallocation such as shifting infusion tasks from specialty nurse teams to generalist nurses. This survey of nurses in the United States found that infusion task reallocation led to increased job demands and reduced resources, thereby contributing to lower perceived organizational safety.

Interhospital transfers pose a serious risk to patients. In this study, nurse anesthetists and intensive care nurses described strategies to ensure safe transport for patients who are intubated or who may require intubation. Strategies include clear and adequate communication between providers prior to transport, stabilizing and optimizing the patient’s condition, and ensuring that appropriate drugs and equipment are prepared and available.

AORN revised its Guideline for prevention of unintentionally retained surgical items in late 2021. This article focuses on concepts and recommendations specific to counting procedures, reconciling discrepancies, technology, and education.

Debriefing is used to enhance individual and team communication and to facilitate real-time learning opportunities after a critical event. This study evaluated a charge nurse-facilitated clinical debriefing program used in Emergency Departments (EDs) in Alberta, Canada. Qualitative analyses identified several themes underscoring the impact of the debriefing program – the impacts on clinical practice and patient care, impacts on psychological safety and teamwork, stress management, and the emotional acknowledgement after critical events – and barriers to debriefing.

Long-term care facilities can struggle with establishing a safety culture. Researchers in this study adapted the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Nursing Home Survey to assess patient safety culture in assisted living facilities. Findings show that direct care workers had significantly worse perceptions of patient safety culture (including nonpunitive responses to mistakes, management support for resident safety, and teamwork) compared to administrators. A PSNet perspective discusses how to change safety culture.

Nurse leaders play an important role in ensuring a robust patient safety culture. Ten nurse leaders at a United States hospital provided their perspectives on how they ensure a culture of safety on their units. Six overarching themes emerged as well as structural and organizational challenges.

Patients transferring between hospitals have poorer outcomes than directly admitted patients, even when adjusting for other risk factors. In this study, transfer center nurses (TCN) described communication challenges that may influence patient outcomes. Themes included referring clinicians providing incomplete information, competing clinical demands, or fear of the transfer request being denied.

Many types of interventions, such as education, technology, and simulations, have been used to reduce medication errors in the intensive care setting. This review identified 11 studies representing six intervention types; three of the six types showed improvement (prefilled syringe, nurses’ education program, and the protocolized program logic form) while the other three demonstrated mixed results.

Shifting to a nonpunitive approach to adverse events can improve error reporting and the overall safety culture. This article describes findings from focus groups with nurses at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) regarding the perceived punitive nature of the hospital’s incident reporting system and outlines how those findings informed changes to the error review process. Lessons learned highlight the importance of who performs error follow-up, skills for navigating difficult conversations, transparency, and executive-level support. Five years after these program changes were implemented, 96% of nurses surveyed felt that the new process was nonpunitive.

Newborn falls or drops are receiving increasing attention as a patient safety issue. This article discusses a quality improvement initiative launched at one hospital aimed to decrease newborn falls through new parent education materials, a nursing risk assessment tool, and standardized reporting system. Three years after implementation, the hospital achieved one year without any newborn falls and there were no fall-related injuries over the three-year period.

Care left undone (also called missed care, unfinished care, and implicitly rationed care) is associated with lower perception of safety culture and increased adverse events. In this study, more than 2,200 pediatric nurses were asked about care tasks left undone in their most recent shift and a variety of environmental factors (e.g., perception of their work environment, risk of burnout). The most frequently omitted task was comfort/talk with patients, and the least frequently omitted task was pain management.