Alongside concern about avoidable mortality, one of the key findings of the public enquiry into failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust,1 which ran Stafford Hospital in England, was the ...

This article is based on three recent issues of Effectiveness Matters that provided advice on how to access the best available online sources of research evidence on clinical and cost effectiveness. 1 ...

Background ‘Situation Awareness For Everyone’ (SAFE) was a 3-year project which aimed to improve situation awareness in clinical teams in order to detect potential deterioration and other potential ...

The number of people living with and beyond cancer is rising rapidly. With earlier detection and better treatments many people are living for years following a diagnosis of cancer. Healthcare systems ...

It is time to pay more attention to incident analysis Incident reporting lies at the heart of many initiatives to improve patient safety. The UK National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA)1 has recently ...

There is a need for the traditional risk management model, which focuses on department based risk assessment, loss management and risk financing, to evolve to enable it to become more responsive to ...

Individual learning Risky behaviours are easiest to perceive at the sharp end of care—where the health professional and patient interact. This is the most readily apparent place for allocating ...

Background: Hospital treatment of heart failure (HF) frequently does not follow published guidelines, potentially contributing to HF high morbidity, mortality and economic cost. The Experimental ...

1 Betsy Lehman Center for Patient Safety, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 2 Patient Safety and Quality Initiatives, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 3 Harvard Medical School ...

Background In 2012, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) programme including mandatory prescriber training and a patient/provider ...

Healthcare systems are under stress as never before. An ageing population, increasing complexity and comorbidities, continual innovation, the ambition to allow unfettered access to care and the ...

Background Catastrophic errors in healthcare are rare, yet the consequences are so serious that where possible, special procedures are put in place to prevent them. As systems become safer, it becomes ...