Legal Perspective: Employee’s Alleged Use of Soiled Scissors Results in Real Harm

A home care client suffered infection and leg amputation after an employee allegedly trimmed dead skin off the client's foot with rusty scissors that had been used to cut off a soiled diaper. In a ...

Service and Support Animals: What Policy Is Right for Your Organization?

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), individuals with disabilities must be allowed to be accompanied by their service animals in all areas of a place of public accommodation. ADA...

Why “Benchmarking” Error Rates Is NEVER a Good Measure of Performance or Patient Safety

Problem: Organizations often want to know, in comparison to their peers, how they stand in achieving and maintaining an environment that promotes patient safety. Benchmarking is a process that can ...

Could Natural Language Processing Help Close Gaps in Infection Prevention and Patient Safety Events?

Natural language processing (NLP) is an increasingly ubiquitous form of artificial intelligence (AI). Best described as where computer science meets linguistics, it uses computational linguistics a...

How To: Safe Administration of Vaccines

​​​​​​​​Vaccinations are an important tool for building immunity to prevent illness, disability, and death resulting from infectious diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Preve...

Candida Auris Cases Are on the Rise. How Can Infection Prevention Respond?

​​​​​​​​Candida auris (C. auris)—an emerging fungus considered an urgent antimicrobial resistance (AR) threat—is on the rise in the United States. According to Centers for Disease Control and Preve...

Hand Hygiene: Fundamentals to Prevent HAIs

​​​​​​​​Proper hand hygiene by healthcare workers is considered to be one of the most important practices for preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) (CDC "Guideline for Hand Hygiene"). ...

Minimizing Distractions and Interruptions During Medication Safety Tasks

Problem: A distraction occurs when an individual’s attention is drawn away from one task to a different task, or when they are trying to work on multiple tasks at the same time. An interruption occ...

Building Effective Policies for Comorbidity Management

​​​​Policies for managing comorbidities, as well as multimorbidity and multiple chronic conditions, vary based on the medical conditions involved; therefore, developing a uniform policy is not nece...

10 Ways to Prevent Falls in Assisted Living Facilities

September 18 -22, 2023, marks Falls Prevention Awareness Week in the United States. Despite widespread fall prevention programs, fall incidence rates are on the rise in the United States, with an a...

10 Steps to Preventing Patient Elopement

Patient elopement is when individuals leave an area they are expected to stay within, for their safety. Elopement from a healthcare facility can have devastating consequences for a patient, includi...

How To: Providing Obstetrical Services When Understaffed

In recent years, more OB units in rural areas have experienced closures and maternity care deserts have grown. In response, many rural healthcare organizations are exploring creative approaches in ...

The da Vinci Surgical Robot and the Importance of Iterative Evidence Review

Medical technology is constantly evolving. As new medical devices are developed and existing devices are updated, clinical trials are conducted to confirm the technology is safe and provides the in...

Video Recordings of Surgical Procedures: How to Ensure Consent, Privacy, and Confidentiality

Many organizations record surgical procedures performed at their facilities with the intention of using the footage for educational or quality assurance purposes, among other reasons. However, it i...

Medical Errors and Health IT: What Does the Data Say?

Health information technology (IT) is a powerful tool for documenting and sharing information about patients’ health and helping providers to make well-informed decisions about patient care. Howeve...

Non-medical Discharge: Navigating Legal, Regulatory, and Ethical Considerations

Hospitals may wish to discharge patients for a variety of non-medical reasons (e.g., if the patient is being violent towards staff, patients, or visitors; if the patient is exhibiting racist behavi...

Preventing Short-Stay Readmissions

​Every care transition carries increased risk of adverse events, poor health outcomes, emotional instability, and high healthcare costs—and the risks are even more elevated for older adults, especi...

Key Elements of Medication Use

Medication use is a complex process that comprises the sub-processes of medication prescribing, order processing, dispensing, administration, and effects monitoring. The Key Elements of the Medicat...

Bringing Everyone to the Table: Rapid Evidence Assessments Facilitate Meaningful Dialogue Across the Stakeholder Spectrum

In the last two decades, the number of commercially available genetic tests is thought to have increased by more than 5,000%—from approximately 1,500 to an estimated 100,000 or more. This number on...

The Role of Primary Care Staff in Coordinating Care for Patients with Complex Medical Conditions

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6 in 10 American adults have one chronic disease, such as heart, lung, or kidney disease; cancer; Alzheimer's disease; and diabetes, and...

Managing Falls in Senior Care and Reducing Risk of Claims

Older adults who reside in senior living and skilled nursing communities fall more often than community-dwelling older adults; about half of all residents fall each year, and 10–25% of those falls ...