Toolkits

A handy list for medical personnel to ensure and implement safe prescribing practices by avoiding use of these dangerous shortcuts.

Time pressure can negatively impact critical thinking, information gathering, and communication abilities. This tool builds teamwork and decision-making skills by testing participants as they work through a time-delimited scenario with a sick child to gather clues and determine a diagnosis. 

Hospital crisis management, preparation, and planning are of heightened interest due to the COVID-19 emergency. This assessment tool examines hospital readiness for the patient surge due to the pandemic. The assessment tool helps organizations examine support structures, monitoring, infection control, supply and space capabilities, and staff support mechanisms to proactively address concerns to prepare for future challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing surge demand and strain on health organizational, department, and unit-level capacity and personnel. This announcement features a prototype tool as a model for health systems to evaluate hospital-specific demand for medical and intensive care unit beds and the needed equipment to equip staff to keep patients safe during shifting conditions associated with providing care during an emerging crisis.

Medication management has been affected in a variety of settings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This guide highlights strategies to ensure safe medication delivery in long term care. Tactics highlighted include medication discontinuation and alignment of medication administration times.

Effective communication is an important component of diagnostic accuracy. Shaped with data collected by a patient safety organization, this five section toolkit features tactics to support effective communication across diagnostic process in children’s hospital care, including the use of time outs, case analysis and communication gap assessment.

Communication strategies are important for engaging staff in behaviors that support effective teamwork. This website highlights a process that involves briefings, supportive conversations, and debriefings as a communication structure for use during COVID-19 care episodes and other complex interactions.

Intravenous vancomycin is an antibiotic with known medication safety risk factors. This assessment is designed to assist organizations to review clinician and organizational knowledge, medication administration activities and health information technology as a risk management strategy to minimize hazards associated with vancomycin use. 

Communication and shared decision-making are fundamental tactics to guide clinical team and patient efforts to minimize the potential for prescription opioid misuse. This tool kit includes modules for providers that outline practice and communication strategies to help with postoperative pain. Patient and family materials in the kit focus on safe medication disposal and instructions for tracking pre- and post-surgery pain levels.

This toolkit focuses on identification of, and rapid response to, sepsis in obstetric patients. It includes screening, evaluation and monitoring, and antibiotic use recommendations for maternal sepsis patient.

This website provides a report and data repository representing medical offices that administered the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Medical Office Survey. Insights on safety culture reflect practices from 1,475 medical offices and more than 18,000 respondents.

Patient safety organizations (PSOs) collect and analyze protected incident data from across the United States. Expert analysis of PSO data can be utilized to inform design and implementation of local initiatives. This brochure provides guidance for health care organizations regarding benefits of working with a PSO and what to consider when choosing one.

Structured processes are important strategies for embedding safe care practices. This tool kit shares training modules and tools to support a 4-point practice to improve antibiotic prescribing and reduce hospital-acquired infections. Elements of the process center on diagnosis, testing, reassessment and duration.

This fact sheet presents a comparative analysis of 57 health indicators across 12 countries worldwide and gives Canada's current status on a variety of patient safety measures. While Canada showed strengths in reporting and responding to incidents, the data revealed a 14 percent increase in retained foreign objects since the previous analysis. 

The Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), originally developed at Johns Hopkins Hospital by Dr. Peter Pronovost and colleagues, has been instrumental in driving patient safety improvement in several landmark patient safety initiatives. The CUSP approach emphasizes improving safety culture by through a continuous process of reporting and learning from errors, improving teamwork, and engaging staff at all levels in safety efforts.  Most recently, an AHRQ-funded project using the CUSP model achieved a 40% reduction of central line–associated bloodstream infections in intensive care units nationwide. This toolkit includes modules on how to build the CUSP team, identify recurring safety concerns, and improve teamwork and communication.

Hospitalized patients are at risk for medication errors. This set of tips seeks to help hospitalized patients contribute to the safe use of medications in their care. Recommendations include that patients know the reason they are taking each medication, speak up if any medications look different than previously, and talk with pharmacists when picking up discharge medications.

Improving teamwork and communication is a continued focus in the hospital setting. This toolkit is designed to help organizations create a culture that embeds teamwork into daily practice routines. Topics covered include team leadership, learning and continuous improvement, clarifying roles, structured communication, and support for raising concerns.

Structured approaches to managing negative psychological consequences of medical errors on health care professionals, patients, and families are important for emotional healing and organizational learning. This webinar series featured discussions on peer support efforts and a toolkit for Canadian health care workers.

This toolkit provides access to nine key tools to help organizations improve teamwork, incident analysis, and communication as well as templates to support their use and instructions to begin associated processes. Featured tools include the Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation approach, huddle agendas, and failure modes and effects analysis.

Newborns assigned temporary names are at increased risk for patient misidentification and wrong-patient errors. This newsletter article reports on the role of electronic health records in newborn misidentification and the unintended consequences associated with a Joint Commission set of recommendations to reduce risk.