Patient safety

There are a number of tools, systems, methodologies, resources, and patient safety products used to guide the implementation of safe practices. Analytic tools can provide powerful insight into the causes of a poor outcome. Understanding the causes of errors and failures is important, and using that understanding to change the process is critical to improvement. This chapter discusses several standard strategies that consistently improve the safety and reliability of processes, including reduced reliance on memory and vigilance with automation, algorithms, alarms, scheduled monitoring, and easily accessible references; improved access to information at the point of care; careful and appropriate use of protocols and checklists; simplification through reduction of unnecessary process steps and hand-offs; standardization to reduce variation; use of constraints to eliminate undesired behavior; and forcing functions to assure desired behavior.