Article explains ways to learn from patient safety incidents

An article published in the May issue of the British Medical Journal provides a template to help health care organizations learn from patient safety incidents. The template enables users to review patient safety incidents and classify them into categories - such as falls, medication errors, pressure ulcers or diagnostic errors - and to analyze them and create recommendations based on a larger sample size and systems approach, rather than individual incidents. The process clearly characterizes the safety incidents, describes the involved safety systems, identifies and classifies contributing factors. (AHRQ Patient Safety Network article, 5/17/23)