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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 101 - 120 of 266 Results
Boutwell A, Bourgoin A , Maxwell J, et al. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; September 2016. AHRQ Publication No. 16-0047-EF.
This toolkit provides information for hospitals to help reduce preventable readmissions among Medicaid patients. Building on hospital experience with utilizing the materials since 2014, this updated guide explains how to determine root causes for readmissions, evaluate existing interventions, develop a set of improvement strategies, and optimize care transition processes.
Measurement Tool/Indicator
Joint Commission Center for Tranforming Healthcare.
Development of high reliability remains an elusive goal for health care organizations. The Joint Commission has also advocated for achieving high reliability in health care. This website collects evidence and existing tools to help organizations work toward high reliability, including the ORO 2.0 assessment tool to enable hospital leaders evaluate their culture, leadership, and performance.
Kaprielian VS; Sullivan DT; Josie King Foundation.
The experience of Sorrel King and the death of her daughter has motivated health care leaders and the industry to improve patient safety. This curriculum provides a set of materials that incorporates lessons from Josie's Story into existing educational programs.
Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; May 2016.
Traditionally, health systems have disclosed adverse events to patients only through a lengthy process that involves providing limited information to patients and families, avoiding admissions of fault, and emphasizing protection of the clinicians involved. This approach may harm safety culture and has been criticized as not being patient-centered. Some pioneering institutions, such as the University of Michigan Health System, began implementing an alternative approach known as "communication and resolution," which emphasizes early disclosure of adverse events and proactive attempts to reach an amicable solution. Early adopters of this method have achieved notable results, including a decline in malpractice lawsuits. The CANDOR toolkit, developed by AHRQ as part of the Medical Liability Reform and Patient Safety Initiative, provides tools for health care organizations to implement a communication-and-resolution program. The toolkit includes videos, slides, gap analysis assessments and teaching materials. It has been tested in 14 hospitals in several different states. A PSNet interview with the chief risk officer of the University of Michigan Health System discusses the organization's pioneering efforts to implement a communication-and-response system.
Chicago, IL: American Hospital Association, Health Research & Educational Trust; 2016.
Checklists are a recommended method to reduce omissions in care, despite controversies regarding their impact on safety. This toolkit provides a collection of checklists that have been developed and field tested by participants in the Hospital Engagement Network to prevent harm associated with the use of central lines, adverse drug events, and falls.
Measurement Tool/Indicator
National Quality Forum.
Patient safety organizations collect data across various systems and states. This site supports review and comment of versions of common formats developed to provide a standardized method to collect and report incident data to patient safety organizations. 
Horsham, PA: Institute for Safe Medication Practices; 2013.
Root cause analysis offers a structured way to detect and address system weaknesses. This workbook illustrates how root cause analysis can be applied to community pharmacy services to identify problems and design an action plan to implement improvement strategies.
Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety. Plymouth Meeting, PA: ECRI; February 2016.
Electronic health records have potential to improve health care, but they may also introduce unanticipated risks. This report describes the results of a group convened to explore strategies to enhance health IT safety. Focusing on copying and pasting health data from one record to another as the first area of concern, the report recommends enabling systems to identify what data has been copied in the electronic health record and where it came from, providing training to ensure the safe use of copy and paste, and regularly track and assess copying and pasting practices. The report includes tools to related to the recommendations. A WebM&M commentary explores the hazards associated with the use of copy and paste.
Measurement Tool/Indicator
National Quality Forum; NQF.
The National Quality Forum (NQF) has been a leader in defining patient safety reporting measures. This website provides information about the third cycle of an NQF patient safety project that solicited new measures and reviewed existing patient safety metrics. A final report is now available.
Leeds, UK: Clinical Support Audit Unit, Health and Social Care Information Centre. 2012-2017.
The NHS Safety Thermometer was a tool developed by the National Health Service to facilitate staff participation in measuring patient harm in various care environments. This report collection explores the data collected on four types of health care–acquired conditions (pressure ulcers, falls, catheter–associated urinary tract infections, and venous thromboembolisms) in NHS patients over a 5-year period. The NHS Safety Thermometer is no longer used as an official data type. 
Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; October 2015.
Catheter–associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) are common complications in hospitalized patients. This toolkit was developed as part of a national implementation project to reduce rates of CAUTIs in hospitals and apply principles of the comprehensive unit-based safety program. The toolkit includes modules that focus on implementation, sustainability, and resources to help hospitals design CAUTI prevention efforts at the unit level.
Chicago. IL: AHA Trustee Services, Health Research and Education Trust; February 2018.
Leadership commitment to improvement efforts is key to sustain patient safety initiatives. This toolkit consists of a workbook, board engagement self-assessment tool, and video modules to help leadership translate efforts from the board room to the front line to reduce medical errors in their hospitals.
Multi-use Website
Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare; TST.
Patient falls are preventable and can be addressed through quality and safety strategies. This toolkit provides a process to help health care organizations determine factors that contribute to falls in their facilities and design interventions to drive improvement.

Brega AG, Barnard J, Mabachi NM, et al. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; January 2015. AHRQ Publication No. 15-0023-EF.

The AHRQ Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, 2nd edition, can help primary care practices implement improvement actions to reduce the complexity of health care, increase patient understanding of health information, and enhance support for patients of all health literacy levels.
WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean. Cairo, Egypt: World Health Organization; 2015. ISBN: 9789290220596.
Patient safety programs should reflect local needs, motivate clinician and leadership engagement, and support sustainable enhancements. This toolkit provides information about how to establish a patient safety program, implement interventions, determine areas needing improvement, and build a culture of safety.
Canadian Patient Safety Institute; CPSI.
Engaging patients and families in safety can uncover concerns and inform improvement efforts. This three-component toolkit provides resources that focus on incident management, patient safety management, and system factors to prevent and respond to failures or near misses.
Institute for Safe Medication Practices; ISMP.
There is a noted lack of agreement on measures to study and track safety hazards and the effectiveness of improvement strategies. This survey sought input from the field to inform the development of a list of medication-related measures to communicate concerns related to drug class, technology use, and medication administration practices as a way to provide data to senior management in an easily accessible format.
National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention; NCCMERP.
Medication errors are a common factor in health care–associated harm. Lack of clarity on types of medication-related incidents has the potential to create confusion and hinder improvement efforts. This tool provides a decision tree to distinguish whether an incident is an adverse drug reaction, adverse drug event, or medication error and determine if it was preventable.
Multi-use Website
Silver Spring, MD: American Nurses Association; 2015.
Nurses play an important role in reducing catheter–associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs). This toolkit, developed as a Partnership for Patients strategy, focuses on promoting nursing behaviors to prevent CAUTIs including decreasing catheter use and improving catheter maintenance.
Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; January 2015.
Health care–associated infections are a known contributor to adverse events among patients on dialysis. Building on evidence and insights from clinicians, this four-part toolkit includes videos, assessment tools, and slide presentations regarding how to apply principles of teamwork, patient engagement, and safety culture to ensure dialysis centers provide safe care to patients with end-stage renal disease.