Conclusions The majority of reports were related to near-misses, and this study highlights scope for examining current arrangements for checking and releasing products, certainly for paediatric ...

Background Although well-established principles exist for improving the timeliness and efficiency of care, many organisations struggle to achieve more than small-scale, localised gains. Where care ...

Background The positive deviance approach focuses on those who demonstrate exceptional performance, despite facing the same constraints as others. ‘Positive deviants’ are identified and hypotheses ...

The Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human shone a spotlight on preventable medical errors and since the release of the report patient safety has become the pre-eminent issue for health care. 1 ...

Healthcare workers could learn much from the engineering and civil aviation industries about safety management. The medical community is becoming more open to learning safety lessons from other ...

The methods of evaluating change and improvement strategies are not well described. The design and conduct of a range of experimental and non-experimental quantitative designs are considered. Such ...

Medical errors continue to occur despite multiple strategies devised for their prevention. Although many safety initiatives lead to improvement, they are often short lived and unsustainable. Our goal ...

Background Incident reporting is a promising tool to enhance patient safety, but few empirical studies have been conducted to identify factors that increase the number of incident reports. Objective ...

Background The authors aimed to determine US and UK doctors' professional values and reported behaviours, and the extent to which these vary with the context of care. Method 1891 US and 1078 UK ...

Patients. Reasons for consulting in primary care vary across the year,7 therefore a random sampling frame was developed to ensure sampled consultations were spread evenly across the calendar year, ...

For many readers, the story of the quality of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust in the UK from 2005 to 2009 will need little introduction. The substandard care provided and the combination of ...

Introduction The vital role of medical workforce well-being for improving patient experience and population health while assuring safety and reducing costs is recognised internationally. Yet the ...