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A clinician's knowledge of an existing condition can implicitly affect treatment recommendations and decisions. This alert highlights the presence of diagnostic overshadowing as a type of bias that is prone to affect disadvantaged or stigmatized patient populations. Listening training programs, improved use of patient data review, and assessment techniques are recommended to trigger diagnostic curiosity to encourage complete decision-making methods when serving patients.

This updated report outlines 19 consensus-based best practices to ensure safe medication administration, such as diluted solutions of vincristine in minibags and standardized metrics for patient weight. The set of recommended practices has been reviewed and updated every two years since it was first developed in 2014 to include actions related to eliminating the prescribing of fentanyl patches for acute pain and use of information about medication safety risks from other organizations to motivate improvement efforts. The 2022 update includes new practices that are associated with oxytocin, barcode verification in vaccine administration, and high-alert medications. 

Safe patient care is reliant on a healthy healthcare workforce. This alert emphasizes organizational conditions and supporting the wellbeing of clinicians under the stress of providing care during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Smart pumps are widely available as a medication safety tool yet there are challenges affecting their reliable use. This guideline expands on earlier recommendations  to support smart pump use in both hospitals and the ambulatory setting. The material provides recommendations that address infrastructure, drug libraries, quality improvement data, workflow and electronic health record interoperability concerns.

Anticoagulant medications are known to be high-risk for adverse drug events. Although direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) require less monitoring than warfarin, they are still associated with an increased risk of patient harm if not prescribed and administered correctly. The Joint Commission has issued a new sentinel event alert to raise awareness of the risks related to DOACs, and in particular, the challenges associated with stopping bleeding in patients on these medications. The alert suggests that health care organizations develop patient education materials, policies, and evidence-based guidelines to ensure that DOACs and reversal agents are used appropriately. A past WebM&M commentary discussed common errors related to the use of DOACs.

Communication-and-resolution mechanisms are seen as important approaches to improving transparency and healing after an adverse event. This state bill, referred to as the "Colorado Candor Act," protects conversations between organizations, clinicians, patient, and families from legal discoverability and outlines criteria to guarantee that protection.

Efforts to reduce surgical site infections have achieved some success. The World Health Organization has taken a leading role in eliminating health care–associated harms and has compiled guidelines to address factors that contribute to surgical site infections in preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative care. The document includes recommendations for improvement informed by the latest evidence. The second edition of the Guidelines was released in 2018.

Improvement efforts have focused on care transitions, which are known to be vulnerable to communication failures. This guideline provides recommendations for ensuring handoffs are performed in pediatric emergency care and suggests adherence to standard communication methods, coupled with effective training on the use of those tools, can improve the safety of transitions.

This U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guideline supports good manufacturing practices by suggesting several strategies for minimizing medical gas-related patient safety incidents. 

Biases can affect decision making and behaviors toward colleagues and patients. This guidance provides information for surgeons to help them identify individual and organizational biases and to address disrespectful behaviors through training and peer support mechanisms.

Patients face risks when undergoing invasive procedures. This report provides recommendations developed by multidisciplinary consensus and outlines how organizations can implement the standards to improve safety of invasive procedures.

Heparin is a high-alert anticoagulant that has been associated with patient harm due to issues with administration and contamination. This draft guidance seeks to engage insights from the field to help improve labeling practices. The deadline for officially submitting comments was October 7, 2015.