The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality outlines 47 practices healthcare providers can adopt or refine to improve patient safety in a new report.
AHRQ's "Making Healthcare Safer III" offers practice-based evidence and guidance for implementing these safety practices in line with national safety goals, which have evolved since the report's second installment was published in 2013.
The resource breaks down the safety practices into 17 different harm areas, listed below:
Diagnostic errors
1. Clinical decision support
2. Result notification systems
3. Education and training
4. Peer review
Failure to rescue
5. Patient monitoring systems
6. Rapid response teams
Sepsis recognition
7. Screening tools
8. Patient monitoring systems
Clostridioides difficile infection
9. Antimicrobial stewardship
10. Hand hygiene
11. Environmental cleaning and decontamination
12. Surveillance
13. Testing
14. Multicomponent prevention interventions
Infections from other multidrug-resistant organisms
15. Chlorhexidine bathing
16. Hand hygiene
17. Active surveillance
18. Environmental cleaning and disinfection
19. Minimize use of devices
20. Communication of MDRO status
Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae
21. Contact precautions
Harms due to anticoagulants
22. Anticoagulation management service
23. Use of dosing protocols or nomograms
24. Safe transitions
Harms due to diabetic agents
25. Standardized insulin protocols
26. Teach-back
Reducing adverse drug events in older adults
27. Deprescribing
28. Use of Screening Tool of Older Person's inappropriate Prescriptions criteria
Harms due to opioids
29. Opioid stewardship
30. Medication-assisted treatment
Patient identification errors in the operating room
31. Operating room/surgery-specific practices
Infusion pumps
32. Structured process changes/workflow redesign
33. Staff education and training
Alarm fatigue
34. Safety culture
35. Alarm risk assessment
Delirium
36. Screening and assessment
37. Staff education and training
38. Nonpharmacologic interventions
Care transitions
39. Transitions of care models
Venous thromboembolism
40. Postsurgical prophylaxis using aspirin
Cross-cutting patient safety topics/practices
41. Patient and family engagement
42. Safety culture
43. Clinical decision support
44. Cultural competency
45. Monitoring auditing and feedback
46. Teamwork and team training
47. Education and training through simulation
For more information on each practice, click here.