Medical errors should be examined in the context of system failure to generate lasting opportunities for learning and improvement. This commentary discusses the AHRQ 2022 report entitled Diagnostic Errors in the Emergency Department: a Systematic Review and suggests a focus on care delivery processes over individuals, definitions, error rate review, and system design as noteworthy approaches to error reduction.

Medication administration is a complex set of tasks completed many times per day for hospitalized patients. This study captures the turbulence of nursing work, the nursing environment, and how that impacts patient safety. The results suggest organizations should re-evaluate current attempts at improving medication administration safety and include nurses in identifying new solutions.

Surgical site infections (SSIs) remain a significant cause of preventable post-operative morbidity and mortality. This narrative review summarizes modifiable and nonmodifiable patient-related factors. It also evaluates modifiable operation-related factors associated with surgical site infections, and highlights six pre-, intra-, and postoperative strategies to reduce surgical site infections, including use of the WHO surgical safety checklist.

Addressing racism in healthcare is a patient safety priority. This article discusses how an active presence by hospital threat management systems (e.g., hospital-employed security, local law enforcement personnel) in pediatric emergency departments (EDs) can help ensure patient safety but also contributes to unsafe care due to racial stereotypes and threat perception among minority patients and caregivers. The authors outline patient-centered strategies at the individual-, intra-organizational-, and extra-organizational levels for responding to disruptive and violent events.

Health systems often implement innovative quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, but the longevity and sustainability of these initiatives remains a challenge. This scoping review explored the factors which enable and hinder sustainability of hospital-wide quality improvement (QI) initiatives. Three overarching themes were identified – the role of (1) people, including the organizational and leadership teams, as well as frontline staff implementing the QI initiatives, (2) processes, such as local and organizational integration and planning for sustainability, and (3) the organizational environment such as resources, infrastructure, and hospital culture.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) who are involved in serious adverse events may feel traumatized by those events, and many organizations have implemented “second victim” training programs to support their workers. This study sought to understand HCWs’ motivations to attend such trainings and a potential association with overconfidence. Understanding the association may help organizations develop effective training programs and increase motivation to attend them.

Operational failures – breakdowns in care processes, such as distractions or situational constraints – can impact healthcare delivery. This cross-sectional analysis using population-based survey data from 11,709 nurses examined the relationship between operational failures, patient satisfaction, nurse-reported quality and safety, and nurse job outcomes. Findings indicate that operational failures negatively impact patient satisfaction, quality and safety, and contribute to poor nurse job outcomes, such as burnout.  

Opioid medication use is associated with an increased risk of adverse events; however research has shown sudden discontinuation of opioids is also associated with adverse events such as withdrawal and hospitalization. This before and after study evaluated the impact of the VA’s Opioid Safety Initiative (OSI) on characteristics and prescribing practices. Results indicate that length of tapering period increased, and mortality risk decreased following OSI implementation.

Production pressures can inhibit effective decision-making and threaten patient safety. This systematic review examines the effects of production pressures in sociotechnical systems and discusses the need for future research to develop and implement systems to monitor and control production pressures.

Anesthesia medications prepared in the operating room are vulnerable to errors at all stages of medication administration, including preparation and dilution. In this study, anesthesiologists were asked to prepare the mixture of three drugs used for spinal anesthesia for cesarean section. Results show deviation from the expected concentration and variability between providers. The authors recommend all medications be prepared in the hospital pharmacy or purchased pre-mixed from the manufacturer to prevent these errors. 

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.

After-hours and weekend admissions to the hospital and intensive care units (ICU) have been linked to poor outcomes. This retrospective analysis compared outcomes among adult patients with daytime versus nighttime ICU admissions at one large Canadian medical center in between 2011 and 2015. Researchers found that overall mortality, but not ICU mortality, was higher among daytime admissions.

Health systems often consider return on investment (ROI) when considering implementation of quality improvement and patient safety interventions (i.e., costs saved by preventing medical errors or improving quality of care). This systematic review explored how ROI concepts have been used in studies assessing large-scale quality improvement programs.