Background Patient identification is a central safety critical aspect of healthcare work. Most healthcare activities require identification of patients by healthcare staff, often in connection with ...

Introduction Telephone consulting is increasingly used to improve access to care and optimise resources for day-time work. However, there remains a debate about how such consultations differ from face ...

Background Communication failures in healthcare teams are associated with medical errors and negative health outcomes. These findings have increased emphasis on training future health professionals to ...

Methods Design: Controlled interrupted time series with a 3 month intervention and observation phases before and after. Setting: Operating theatres conducting elective orthopaedic surgery in a single ...

Background In 2008, the WHO produced a surgical safety checklist against a background of a poor patient safety record in operating theatres. Formal team briefings are now standard practice in ...

The goal of improving patient safety has led to a number of paradigms for directing improvement efforts. The main paradigms to date have focused on reducing injuries, reducing errors, or improving ...

Introduction Mortality from severe sepsis can be improved by timely diagnosis and treatment. This study investigates the effectiveness of a comprehensive management protocol for recognition and ...

Background: Substantial efforts are focused on the high prevalence of patient harm due to medical errors and the mechanisms to prevent them. The potential role of the medical student as a valuable ...

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of the response of NHS hospital trusts to an alert issued by the National Patient Safety Agency designed to limit the availability of concentrated potassium ...

Background For the first 5 years of the UK primary care pay for performance scheme, the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), quality indicators were introduced without piloting. However, in 2009, ...

Footnotes Funding The Centre for Medication Safety and Service Quality is affiliated with the Centre for Patient Safety and Service Quality at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust which is funded by ...

Introduction: Falls in hospital inpatients are common, with reported rates ranging from 3 to 14 per 1000 bed days. They cause physical and psychological harm, are associated with impaired ...