Four Ways to Say No to Adverse Drug Reactions

The seeds of an adverse drug interaction can be planted at any point in the care process, by any of the individuals involved. For instance, take a look at these common scenarios: A clinician, over...

Rethinking Incident Investigations in Senior Care

Decisions made and actions taken in the first minutes and hours after an incident occurs in an aging services organization set the stage for everything else that follows. For instance, consider thi...

The EtO Sterilization Dilemma

Ethylene oxide (EtO) sterilization has been in the news a lot lately, and healthcare has much at stake. According to officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), approximately 56% of a...

Diagnosing Communication Gaps in Diagnostic Test Reporting

In the United States, there are 30 times more outpatient visits as hospital discharges. As a result of the high volumes and complexities inherent to ambulatory settings, one in twenty patients can ...

2020 Top 10 Health Technology Hazards Executive Brief

Learn how to identify and address health technology hazards in your facilities This 13th edition of our Top 10 list features many first-time topics, with an emphasis on newly developing hazards and...

Speaking Up About Patient Safety Requires an Observant Questioner and a High Index of Suspicion

Healthcare practitioners are expected to speak up about patient safety concerns to help intercept errors and avoid adverse patient outcomes. By ‘speaking up,’ we mean raising concerns for the benef...

Safer Opioid Prescribing through Health IT

Editorial Note: This blog was also co-authored by Shari Medina, MD, of Harris Healthcare, chair of EHRA’s Patient Safety Work Group who led the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety’s workgroup ...

ECRI Data Help Reignite Support for Patient Identifier in Congress

After heart disease and cancer, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States and include misdiagnoses, incorrect anesthesia, delayed treatment, and patient misidentifica...

4 Ways to Prevent Harm from Surgical Staplers

If you’ve been following medical device safety issues this year, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the headlines about patient injuries and deaths related to internal surgical staplers. The devices...