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Toolkits

Patient safety toolkits provide practical applications of PSNet research and concepts for front line providers to use in their day to day work. These toolkits contain resources necessary to implement patient safety systems and protocols.

Latest Toolkits

Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; October 2020.
Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are increasingly being used to provide surgical care. The AHRQ Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) Ambulatory Surgery Center Survey seeks opinions from the field regarding safety culture in the ambulatory surgical center environment. The survey is presented with additional resources to help organizations assess their safety culture, including the results of a pilot program testing the survey and a user's guide. Voluntary data submission will be open June 1-22 for ASCs that have administered the survey.
Measurement Tool/Indicator
Classic
Rockville MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; 2020.
Culture has been described as a key to establishing high reliability organizations. The National Quality Forum's Safe Practices for Healthcare and the Leapfrog Group both mandate hospitals to regularly assess their safety culture. This AHRQ Web site provides validated safety culture survey tools (Hospital, Medical Office, Nursing Home, Community Pharmacy, Ambulatory Surgery Center), user guides health care organizations can use to implement the surveys and a bibliography of articles discussing the use of SOPS in the field. Organizations can also use the AHRQ database to compare their Surveys on Patient Safety Culture™ (SOPS®) results. In addition, reports are available that summarize the benchmarking data across cohorts nationwide. An AHRQ WebM&M perspective discussed how to establish a safety culture.

Horsham, PA; Institute for Safe Medication Practices: April 2023.

Community pharmacies are common providers of medication delivery that harbor process weaknesses affecting safety. This guidance shares evidence-based steps to address problems such as wrong patient errors and lack of consistent barcode system use in the community setting.
Measurement Tool/Indicator
Joint Commission.
This website provides sentinel event data reported to The Joint Commission, which includes information on sentinel events reported from January through December 2022. Falls, unintended retained foreign bodies, and delays in treatment were among the most frequently submitted incidents in this time period which represents a 19% increase over 2021. The data and graphs are updated regularly and include a 5 year trend analysis and specific analysis associated with event type by year from 2018 through 2022.

All Toolkits (266)

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Displaying 61 - 80 of 266 Results
Canadian Patient Safety Institute: 2019.
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.
Boston, MA: Institute for Healthcare Improvement; 2019.
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.

ISMP Medication Safety Alert! Acute Care Edition. April 25, 2019.

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. 
Commentary
SIS Patient Safety Committee. Spine Intervention Society.
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.
Fact Sheet/FAQs
Classic
Horsham, PA; Institute for Safe Medication Practices: February 2019.
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.
Horsham, PA: Institute for Safe Medication Practices; 2018.
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.
Chicago, IL: Health Research & Educational Trust; 2018.
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.
Itasca, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics; 2018.
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.
SIDM Patient Engagement Committee. Evanston, IL: Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine; October 2018.
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.
Horsham, PA; Institute for Safe Medication Practices: 2018.
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.
Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety. Plymouth Meeting, PA: ECRI; August 2018.
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.
Fact Sheet/FAQs
Patient Safety and Risk Management Service Delivery and Safety. Geneva, Switzerland; World Health Organization: August 2019.
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.
Government Resource
National Health Service.
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.
University of Utah Drug Information Service; ASHP; American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
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.
Tools/Toolkit
NHS Improvement. London, UK: National Health Service; March 15, 2018.
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.
Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. June 2017.
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.
Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; March 2018.
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.
Institute for Safe Medication Practices; ISMP.
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. 
Toolkit
Choosing Wisely Canada.
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.
Center for Health Design. Concord, CA: Center for Health Design; 2018.
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.