All Content

The dismissal of parental concerns is a known contributor to medical errors in children. This story illustrates how poor communication, lack of respect, and anchoring bias  contributed to failure in the care of a boy. The authors share actions being taken by the hospital involved in the tragedy to partner with the family to improve diagnosis practices throughout their organization.

Using the events at the United Kingdom’s Mid Staffordshire Trust hospital as a case study, the authors discuss the impact of ‘collective denial’ on organizational processes and safety culture. The authors suggest that safeguards allowing for self-reflection and correction be implemented early in the safety reporting process, and that employees be granted power to speak up about safety concerns.

Communication has become a foci of improvement efforts across the spectrum of patient safety. This article discusses a surgical complication incident that illustrates the importance of transparency, disclosure and collaboration as elements of a successful approach to communication that can successfully manage the impact of an adverse incident.

After a cluster of perinatal deaths was identified in 2015, the authors assessed 15-years of routinely collected observational data from 7 different sources (administrative, patient complaint and legal data) preceding the cluster to determine whether the incidents could have been predicted and prevented. The extent of clinical activity along with direct-to-service patient complaints were found to be the more promising for purposes of potential predictive signals. The authors suggest that use of some routinely collected data of these types show promise; however, further work needs to be done on specificity and sensitivity of the data and to gain access to comparator data is needed.

This commentary reviews general aspects of the disclosure movement, supportive evidence, and challenges associated with liability concerns. The authors discuss barriers unique to radiology that have hindered acceptance of the practice and highlight how communication-and-resolution programs can support radiologist participation in disclosure conversations.

Managing errors that affect patients who lack decision-making capacity and a designated decision-maker is a new area of concern. This commentary discusses moral, ethical, legal, and clinical reasons for health care to examine how to respond when such a situation occurs. The authors hope to motivate development of needed protocols and best practices to ensure that this vulnerable patient population is respectfully and completely informed after medical errors.

Large-scale system failures can damage an organization's credibility. This commentary analyzes how one organization responded after an incident that involved 76 patients who mistakenly received fatally high doses of radiation. The strategies discussed center on the importance of organizational communication to patients, navigating the blame response, and rapid efforts to prevent similar events.

Clinicians sometimes need to address errors committed by other providers, who may or may not be part of their own organization. This study used simulated cases to explore patient preferences for error disclosure when the disclosing provider was not involved in the error. Patients strongly preferred that these errors be treated similarly to other errors, asking for full disclosure whenever possible. A review article and a WebM&M commentary discuss frameworks for providers to use when disclosing errors committed by another clinician.

Although disclosure of medical error to patients is difficult, it is an ethical responsibility. This article discusses situations involving patients who are incapacitated and unrepresented but have no surrogate present to assist in communication and care coordination. Despite this challenge, the author argues that the clinician and organization still have the responsibility to document what happened, communicate what is known, and rectify the mistake.

This commentary recommends that health care structure the work environment to address conditions that allow for failure. The authors discuss how increased commitment to collective accountability for improvement will result in the robust infrastructure, proactive risk assessment, and cultural conditions needed to ensure patient safety.