Email Updates
This piece focuses on changes in the nursing workforce over recent years, including nursing shortages. Patient safety challenges may arise from these workforce challenges, but those challenges can also be mitigated.
Katie Boston-Leary, PhD, MBA, MHA, RN, NEA-BC, CCT, is the Director of Nursing Programs at the American Nurses Association and Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University. We spoke to her about patient safety amid nursing workforce challenges.
This pair of cases highlight the immediate and long-term consequences of delayed recognition of compartment syndrome, despite patients presenting with symptoms such as severe pain, numbness, and swelling in the affected limbs. The commentary discusses the importance of a multifactor assessment when compartment syndrome is suspected, effective processes for trainees and non-physician staff to escalate concerns to attending physicians when compartment syndrome is suspected, and improving post-discharge follow-up practices to identify patients requiring further evaluation.
ISMP Medication Safety Alert! Acute care. April 4, 2024;29(7):1-4.
Manchester, UK: Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman; March 2024.
Certain groups of people disproportionately experience avoidable harm in our healthcare system. Over the course of 2023, research posted to AHRQ PSNet has focused on the issue of equity in patient safety. This Year in Review Perspective discusses this body of research, through findings on clinician bias, technological tools, current initiatives directed at improving health equity, and in clinical areas such as obstetrics.
Throughout 2023, the importance of communication during transitions of care was a recurrent theme among articles on AHRQ PSNet. This Year in Review Perspective for 2023 discusses strategies for effective communication during transitions of care, spanning interactions among healthcare professionals, across organizations, and with patients, families, and caregivers.
