It is inevitable that healthcare workers throughout their careers will witness actual or potential threats to patient safety in the course of their work. Some of these threats will result in serious harm occurring to others, whilst at other times such threats will result in minimal harm, or a ‘near miss’ where harm is avoided at the last minute. Despite organizations encouraging employees to ‘s...

Background Employee engagement is the emotional commitment of the employee towards the organisation. We aimed to analyse baseline work engagement using Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) at a teaching hospital.   Methods We have conducted a cross-sectional study within the National Health Service (NHS) Teaching Hospital in the UK. All participants were working age population from both genders...

The article by Cheri Wilson, “Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality: The Case for Language Access”, highlights 
the challenges of providing Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) to patients with 
Limited English Proficiency (LEP). As the US pursues high-value, high-performance healthcare, our ability 
to meet the needs of our most vulnerable will determine whether we succeed...

Medical errors and adverse events are a serious threat to patients worldwide. In recent years methodologically sound studies have demonstrated that interventions exist, can be implemented and can have sustainable, measurable positive effects on patient safety. Nonetheless, system-wide progress and adoption of safety practices is slow and evidence of improvements on the organisational and system...

ways that other industries have successfully tackled this problem. It also includes detailed analyses of systems failures in the delivery of care to (primarily) hospitalized patients and identifies steps that healthcare institutions can take to reduce their error rates. The report is essentially a call to action for policymakers, providers, and the American public to create a groundswell for ch...

By now most of our readers have become well acquainted with the Patient Protection and Af ford able Care Act (PPACA), which Congress passed in March 2010. No doubt your institution is working hard to grapple with the implications of these changes. Somehow lost in the background noise of the PPACA was the earlier passage of the federal Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act (the Patient Safe...