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Physicians have unique perspectives when exposed to health care delivery problems as patients themselves or as caregivers. This news story shares the author’s frustrations with the system of care observed during an overnight visit at the bedside of her daughter awaiting an emergency appendectomy. Her experience underscored the value of patients and families engaging in the safety of actions clinicians take when providing care. 

Emergency medical services are often provided under chaotic circumstances that may contribute to failure. This story highlights a series of esophageal intubation errors and efforts to minimize this “never event” across the state of Rhode Island. Improvement strategies discussed include practice restrictions for EMT personnel and use of less invasive, less risky processes to provide oxygen as an alternative to intubation, which may reduce esophageal intubation errors

Having family members or patient advocates present during hospitalizations can help prevent errors. This newsletter article suggests that utilizing this risk prevention strategy in peripheral care areas such as radiology and other testing units could also prevent patient harm. Recommendations to ensure success of this approach include communicating with advocates, encouraging them to speak up, and activating a rapid response to patient deterioration.

Frontline leadership should model just culture behaviors to encourage reporting and discussion of error to facilitate improvement. This news article uses a medical administration error to examine whether human error, at-risk behavior, or reckless action on the part of a clinician led to the mistake and explores leadership response to the incident to determine accountability in each type of situation.

Incidence of maternal harm is increasing in the United States. This news article series reports on factors that contribute to preventable maternal mortality, such as omission of recommended care processes, lack of patient-centeredness, and missed or delayed diagnoses of serious conditions.

This announcement reports on mistaken intravenous administration of breast milk and provides recommendations to prevent parenteral administration of enteral nutrition.

Exploring causes of wrong-site, wrong patient, and wrong procedure errors in radiology, this piece suggests strategies to reduce the incidence of such events.

This newspaper article discusses how combining best practices in teamwork, simulation, and communication can improve patient safety during obstetric emergencies.

This article explores inaccuracy of dosage, lack of protocol adherence, and absence of transparency as trends that hinder learning from radiological adverse events.

First in a series on medical radiation, this news feature investigates patient deaths and injuries following mistakes related to radiation treatment. The journalists discuss the number of radiation therapy errors in New York and reveal that state law does not require public reporting of such mistakes.

This newspaper article discusses increasing concerns over potential burn injuries in the hospital setting and reports on efforts to raise awareness of the dangers and promote preventative measures.

Emphasizing the importance of safe device use to prevent patient harm, this article reports on the top 10 technology hazards in hospitals according to ECRI Institute's annual list, which includes alarm hazards, retained fragments, misleading displays, and surgical fires.

The author, a paramedic, recounts his experience with an intubation error and discusses patient care errors within the broader context of human error, necessary fallibility, and quality assurance.

This article reports on hospitals that are creating dedicated teams of experts who have the skills to perform risky medical procedures.

This article reports on incidents of wrong drug and wrong route administration of epidurals in the United Kingdom's National Health Service.

This article reports on an analysis of data collected by United States Pharmacopeia's voluntary reporting program that found medication errors are seven times more likely to occur during radiological procedures.

This article reports on recommendations developed by United States Pharmacopeia (USP) to improve the safety of using medical gas, including revisions to USP monographs.