The patient safety movement has raised awareness of the presence of multiple factors that align to result in patient harm, yet implementing processes to fully examine and change practice from that perspective is challenged. This article discusses this situation and provides recommendations to orient improvement efforts toward deeper investigation methods to identify latent contributors to care failure.

Medication errors continue to occur despite long-standing efforts to reduce them. This article summarizes types of errors submitted to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices reporting program in 2021. The piece discusses the medications involved, recommendations for improvement, and technologies to be employed to minimize error occurrence.

Delays in diagnosis and treatment during life-threatening emergencies such as strokes can result in irreversible patient harm. This article discusses a variety of factors contributing to errors in administering hypertonic sodium chloride in emergent situations. The piece shares recommendations touching on various elements of the medication delivery process to enhance safety.

Parenteral nutrition (PN) processes contain various steps that are prone to errors resulting in patient harm. This article discusses standardization as a strategy to reduce the potential for missteps and shares resources for process evaluation to improve PN reliability and safety.

Medication safety is improved through the sharing of frontline improvement experiences and concerns. These articles share recommendations to reduce risks associated with distinct areas of the medication use process. The topics discuss areas that require specific attention during the COVID-19 pandemic such as the use of smart pumps and automated dispensing cabinets.

This article reports on the results of a survey on the use of practices to improve the safety of prescribing and dispensing of long-acting opioids and use of the override feature in automated dispensing cabinets. The approximately 250 hospitals responding shared experience indicating weakness in implementing improvement efforts on the two practices studied. The results found that hospitals employing a medication safety officer had stronger uptake of the best practices.