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Aviation continues to serve as an exemplar for healthcare safety efforts. This story highlights work toward the development of a National Patient Safety Board for medicine to establish a neutral centralized body to examine errors and share improvements driven by a robust self-reporting culture similar to that in commercial aviation.

Testing for COVID-19 is a core public safety strategy for pandemic management. This news story discusses how a lack of health care workers’ virus status knowledge could contribute to spread. Barriers inherent to a universal testing strategy include operational challenges, patient testing volume, and availability of health care workers to provide care during the pandemic should clinicians test positive.

Physician implicit bias is gaining attention as a patient safety concern. This piece shares a story of ineffective care delivery to a patient with COVID-19 as context for the discussion. Hospital tactics to address the problem such as training and use of patient survey data to motivate individual action are reviewed.   

Clinicians are susceptible for medication misuse due to stress, fatigue, or arrogance. This news article discusses how drug diversion should signal behaviors that can harm patients, the clinicians themselves, and the organizations they work for. Reporting gaps contribute to the perpetuation of the problem. 

Built environment characteristics can contribute to the spread of infection. This news segment discusses design approaches one hospital implemented to reduce the potential for COVID-19 transmission to both patients and clinicians in their organization. Prevention tactics highlighted include placement of equipment and creation of negative pressure isolation rooms.

Access to care has been strained by the COVID-19 pandemic. This radio segment discusses how implicit biases can affect care of patients with disabilities. It highlights how preconceptions about this patient population could limit their access to treatments should they become ill.

Financial harms occur in health care due to a variety of factors such as overdiagnosis and ineffective billing practices. This radio interview highlights physician concerns over a hospital policy to sue patients and families for unpaid bills. Physicians at the organization have stated the practice works against their commitment to keeping patients from harm.

This radio news segment reports on a study examining the impact of insufficient sleep on health care and other high-risk industry workers. The piece emphasizes the role that stress, worry, social media, and lack of sleep prioritization play in the situation.

Maternal morbidity and mortality is a worldwide patient safety problem. This analysis describes the prevalence of pregnancy-related death and areas of concern during pregnancy, at delivery, and up to a year postpartum. It reports that 60% of these deaths are preventable and provides suggestions for families, clinicians, and systems to reduce risks.

Policy, practice, and communication strategies have been implemented in an effort to stem the opioid crisis and prescribing activities that contribute to misuse. This news article and accompanying webcast discuss an initiative in California that sends letters to prescribers whose patients have died due to opioid overdose. The piece outlines unintended consequences associated with the practice, including clinician reluctance to prescribe opioids for pain. An Annual Perspective discussed the patient safety aspects of the opioid epidemic.

Medical care overuse is emerging as a patient safety hazard that can result in harms such as unneeded testing and poor end-of-life care. This collection of articles and audiovisual resources explore factors that contribute to medical care overuse and its impact on patients and their families.

Maternal death is a sentinel event. This news audio segment reports on childbirth-related death in the United States and firsthand accounts of complications associated with childbirth, such as infection. The interview also discusses how misdiagnosis contributes to the severity of problems. This piece is part of an ongoing series on the safety of maternal care.

Delayed diagnosis of sepsis can have serious consequences. This article and accompanying set of infographics spotlight the importance of prompt identification and treatment of sepsis and suggest how providers, organizations, patients, and families can help improve recognition of sepsis.

Health care–associated infections (HAI) are a worldwide patient safety problem. This article and accompanying set of infographics spotlight the importance of addressing HAIs and provide updates on improvements associated with better use of catheters, appropriate patient isolation, and increased vigilance to reduce the risks of antibiotic-resistant infections.

Raising concerns around the use of armed security guards in health care settings, this newspaper article and companion podcast report on the experience of a patient who disclosed a need for mental health treatment upon arriving at a hospital where staff failed to appropriately address his psychiatric condition and instead treated his physical injuries. The patient became increasingly agitated and hospital security personnel ultimately used weapons to subdue him.

Spotlighting the author's experience with autopsies to provide context regarding diagnostic errors as a patient safety problem, this commentary outlines recommendations from the recent Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare report and calls for the creation of diagnostic management teams to enhance care quality.

Errors in the prescribing process can lead to adverse drug events. This slide set provides information about common problems in prescribing such as selecting the wrong drug in a drop-down menu, formulation mix-ups, alert fatigue, poor quality of data in health information systems, and use of ambiguous abbreviations.

This news radio segment discusses the aging population of physicians (one in four physicians is at least 65 years old), concerns regarding how age can affect physician skill, and efforts to address this issue through ongoing assessment and policy initiatives.

Patient and family stories of harm are increasingly promoted as a strategy to provide insights into medical errors. This radio segment interviews a patient advocate whose daughter died due to medical errors, including failure-to-rescue and a health care–associated infection, and who speaks about that experience to educate clinicians on the importance of patient safety and listening to patients' families.