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Fear of criminal liability may inhibit clinicians from reporting medical errors, thereby reducing opportunities for learning. This commentary discusses recent legal actions brought against clinicians, including Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught, and the negative impact such actions may have on the longstanding disclosure movement.

Unintentionally retained foreign objects can be exacerbated by fatigue, distractions, and communication errors. This article highlights the importance of effective teamwork, high reliability orientation, and standardized surgical count methods to minimize the persistent problem of retained surgical items.

Strong patient safety culture is a cornerstone to sustained safety improvements. This cross-sectional study explored nurses’ perceptions about patient safety culture. Identified areas of strength included non-punitive responses to errors and teamwork, and areas for improvement focused on supervisor and manager expectations, responses, and actions to promote safety and open communication. The authors highlight the importance of measuring patient safety culture in order to improve hospitals’ patient safety improvement practices, overall performance and quality of healthcare delivery.

Human factors play an important role in contributing to and preventing adverse events. This study found that integrating human factors into a new root cause analysis process led to an increase in the number of strong interventions implemented after adverse events.

Reporting incidents and errors is a cornerstone of patient safety improvement efforts, but challenges remain, including low quality of reports and low rates of reporting. This article discusses the technological challenges of incident reporting and offers recommendations to improve usability in future reporting systems.

Combining patient complaints and staff incident reports allows hospitals to better understand causes of patient harm. This children’s hospital designed a program to investigate serious experience events (SEE) modeled after their serious safety events (SSE) program. Through case studies, the authors describe how patient complaints were investigated to improve both patient experience and safety.

Organizations may employ one or more methods for identifying and examining near misses and preventable adverse events, including structured record review, web-based incident reporting systems, and daily safety briefings. Using each of the three methods, this study identified the number and types of near misses and adverse events. Results indicate that each method identifies different numbers and types of adverse events, suggesting a multi-focal approach to adverse event data collection may more effectively inform organizations. 

Wrong blood in tube (WBIT) errors can result in serious diagnostic and treatment errors, but may go unrecognized by clinical staff. In this study, machine learning was used to identify potential WBIT errors which were then compared to manual review by laboratory staff. The machine learning models showed higher accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity compared to manual review. 

Achieving high reliability is a goal for every healthcare organization. Based on interviews with hospital leadership, clinicians, and staff, this study explored how healthcare professionals understand and perceive high-reliability principles. Findings indicate that some principles are more supported than others and identified inconsistent understanding of principles across different types of healthcare professionals.

Root cause analysis (RCA) is widely used to investigate, monitor, and learn from unintended events (UE). One method of RCA is the Prevention and Recovery Information System for Monitoring and Analysis (PRISMA)-method. This review identified 25 studies that used the PRISMA method to analyze UEs. Combining record reviews with provider interviews and using multiple PRISMA-trained researchers may increase the number of causes identified.

Delays in diagnosis and treatment can lead to poor outcomes for patients. Researchers reviewed root cause analysis (RCA) reports to identify factors contributing to delays in diagnosis and treatment among surgical patients at the Veterans Health Administration. Of the 163 RCAs identified, 73% reflected delays in treatment, 15% reflected delays in diagnosis, and 12% reflected delays in surgery. Policies and processes (e.g., lack of standardized processes, procedures not followed correctly) was the largest contributing factor, followed by communication challenges, and equipment or supply issues.

Reducing hospital 30-day readmissions is seen as a way to improve safety and reduce costs. Baltimore City mobile integrated health and community paramedicine (MIH-CP) was designed to improve transitional care from hospital to home. After one year in operation, MIH-CP performed a chart review to determine causes of readmission among patients in the program. Root cause analysis indicated that at least one social determinant of health (e.g., health literacy) played a role in preventable readmissions; the program was modified to improve transitional care.

Inpatient falls are a common patient safety event and can have serious consequences. This study used hospital safety reporting system data to characterize falls in perioperative settings. Falls represented 1% of all safety reports between 2014 and 2020 and most commonly involved falls from a bed or stretcher. The author suggests strategies to identify patients at high risk for falls, improve fall-related training for healthcare personnel, and optimize equipment design in perioperative areas to prevent falls.

People of color experience disproportionately higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. As part of a larger quality improvement and patient safety initiative to reduce severe maternal morbidity from hemorrhage (SMM-H), this hospital analyzed administrative data stratified by race and ethnicity, and noted a disparity between White and Black patients. Review of this data was integrated with the overall improvement bundle. Post-implementation results show that SMM-H rates for Black patients decreased.

A retained foreign object can lead to serious clinical consequences and is considered a never event. Researchers analyzed a national patient safety incident database to identify factors contributing to guidewire retention and potential preventative measures. Findings indicate that most retained guidewires are identified after the procedure. The authors suggest that system changes or design modifications to central venous catheter equipment is one approach to prevent guidewire attention.