Toolkits

This resource provides newsletters that target concerns associated with spinal pain interventions and offers safety strategies. The collection focuses on three primary areas: procedural contraindications, procedure-related complications, and injectate-related complications such as the safe use of multi-dose and single-dose vials.

Drawing on information gathered from the ISMP Medication Errors Reporting Program, this fact sheet provides a comprehensive list of commonly confused medication names, including look-alike and sound-alike name pairs. Drug name confusion can easily lead to medication errors, and the ISMP has recommended interventions such as the use of tall man lettering in order to prevent such errors. An error due to sound-alike medications is discussed in this AHRQ WebM&M commentary.

Standardized practices have not been uniformly adopted to support safe IV medication therapy. This risk assessment tool will help organizations proactively identify process weaknesses that could contribute to patient harm. Users of the guide can also contribute to a national effort to collect data on current IV push practices. The data collection process is now closed.

Proactive identification of conditions that degrade the diagnostic process can drive improvement. This toolkit provides resources to help organizations seeking to improve diagnosis. The publication includes case studies that illustrate implementation challenges and provides infrastructure enhancement suggestions for hospital teams as they design interventions to reduce diagnostic errors.

Diagnostic error prevention in primary care is a persistent challenge. This AHRQ-funded toolkit provides guidance for ambulatory care organizations that seek to improve the reliability of diagnosis in children. The material focuses on tactics to enhance how practices recognize, track, and follow up on adolescent depression, pediatric elevated blood pressure, and actionable laboratory results.

Patient engagement has been promoted as a strategy to enhance safety in health care. This toolkit helps patients organize information about their medical history, current concerns, symptoms, and medications to prepare them for medical appointments.

This fact sheet lists medications with a high risk of causing significant harm to patients when incorrectly administered. The 2018 publication reflects insights gathered through a survey of current medication use in acute care facilities. The update includes changes such as expanded examples of antithrombotic agents listed and removal of IV radiocontrast media due to lack of errors reported with its use.

Inadequate follow-up of test results can contribute to missed and delayed diagnoses. Developing optimal test result management systems is essential for closing the loop so that results can be acted upon in a timely manner. The Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety convened a working group to identify how technology can be used to facilitate improved communication and timely action regarding test results. This report summarizes the methods used by the working group and their findings. Recommendations include improving communication by standardizing the format of test results, including required timing for diagnostic testing responses, automating the notification process in electronic health records, and optimizing alerts to reduce alert fatigue. A past WebM&M commentary discussed a case involving ambulatory test result management.

This publication highlights statistics that illustrate the global impact of patient harm. The information provided includes the number of hospitalized patients injured during the care process, global costs of medication-related harms, and risks associated with radiation use.

Data surveillance and transparency are core to measuring and informing improvement efforts. This website provides detailed data that links ambulatory care prescribing activity to National Health Service hospitalizations in an effort to clarify potential adverse medication events. The dashboard launched tracking gastrointestinal bleeding as an indicator of a medication-related adverse result and will expand to other indicators and conditions over time.

Efforts to limit the availability of opioids has led to a shortage of needed medications. This fact sheet provides strategies for organizations who seek to improve management of injectable opioids while taking into account both safety and supply availability.

Although focusing on system failure has been highlighted as key to improving patient safety, individual behaviors must also be recognized as contributors to risks. This guide provides tactics for managers to address concerns associated with practitioner performance that arise during incident investigations. The guide helps managers initiate constructive conversations with clinical staff when their performance creates conditions for unsafe care delivery.

Communication in labor and delivery units can be challenging. This AHRQ-funded program draws from comprehensive unit-based safety program principles to reduce errors in maternal and neonatal care. The toolkit provides guidance and materials focused on enhancing teamwork skills, implementing perinatal safety strategies, and utilizing in situ simulation. Team training modules and care bundles are shared to enable skill development. A previous WebM&M commentary explored a near miss with a neonate.

Organizational culture can affect the use of tools and processes implemented to improve safety. This release of the Health Information Technology Patient Safety Supplemental Item Set to be used in conjunction with the AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Hospital Survey can help organizations explore how culture affects the use of health information technology. Included with the data set is a report of initial results regarding its use in the field.

Smart infusion pumps help prevent dosage errors and capture metrics on therapy delivery and omissions. This survey sought to gather data on how clinicians use infusion pump data to inform improvement efforts. 

Opioid misuse is a concern in both the United States and Canada. This campaign shares 14 specialty-specific recommendations to improve opioid safety in Canadian hospitals. An Annual Perspective discussed the opioid crisis as a patient safety concern.

Behavioral and mental health patients have unique concerns that affect their safety. This toolkit provides strategies, insights, and research to address vulnerabilities to this patient population. Design interventions to improve the service environment are also available.

Limits in patients' ability to understand health instructions and information affects the safety of their care. This toolkit provides resources related to health literacy including a business case for interventions, educational materials, and guides for engaging patients in discussions about low health literacy.

Preventing surgical complications including surgical site infections are a worldwide target for improvement. This toolkit builds on the success of the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program to initiate change. The tools represent practical strategies that helped members of a large-scale collaborative to identify areas of weakness, design improvements, and track the impact of the interventions.

Transitions are known to be vulnerable to communication errors. This toolkit focuses on patient transitions between ambulatory care environments and encourages staff to engage patients and families in their care to prevent errors during care transitions.