Objective The need for clinical staff to reliably identify patients with a shortened life expectancy is an obstacle to improving palliative and end-of-life care. We developed and evaluated the ...

Background As nurses are the principal care provider in the hospital setting, the completion or omission of nursing care is likely to have a sizable impact on the patient care experience. However, ...

A wide variety of research studies suggest that breakdowns in the diagnostic process result in a staggering toll of harm and patient deaths. These include autopsy studies, case reviews, surveys of ...

There are no easy solutions to the problem of improving the quality of care. Research has shown how difficult it can be, but has failed to provide reliable and effective ways to change services and ...

Patients, clinicians and managers all want to be reassured that their healthcare organisation is safe. But there is no consensus about what we mean when we ask whether a healthcare organisation is ...

Background Resident work hour restrictions have led to the creation of the ‘night float’ to care for the patients of multiple primary teams after hours. These residents are often inundated with acute ...

Background Patient complaints have been identified as a valuable resource for monitoring and improving patient safety. This article critically reviews the literature on patient complaints, and ...

Background: Breakdown in communication among members of the healthcare team threatens the effective delivery of health services, and raises the risk of errors and adverse events. Aim: To describe the ...

SIMULATION FOR TRAINING IS EFFECTIVE WHEN … There is no question that simulation can be an effective tool for training complex skills. There is some evidence that it works. 1 But it is only a tool. As ...

The stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial is a popular design in implementation and health services research. All clusters, such as clinics or hospitals, start in the control state, and gradually ...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature and causes of human errors in the intensive care unit (ICU), adopting approaches proposed by human factors engineering. The basic ...

Background Creating and sustaining an institutional climate conducive to patient and health worker safety is a critical element of successful multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategies aimed at ...