Objectives To document the burden of in-hospital falls and fractures, and to identify factors that may increase the risk of these events. Design A retrospective cohort analysis Setting The study was ...

Background Medication non-adherence in ambulatory care has received substantial attention in the literature, but less so as it affects acute care. Accordingly, we aimed to estimate the frequency with ...

In his recent book Ignorance: how it drives science, Stewart Firestein states, ‘Knowledge is a big subject. Ignorance is bigger.’1 Firestein's book does not explore the ways of knowledge, but the ...

Introduction Monitoring hospital mortality rates is widely recommended. However, the number of preventable deaths remains uncertain with estimates in England ranging from 840 to 40 000 per year, these ...

Methods The authors conducted a prospective observational time and motion study in the emergency department of a 400-bed teaching hospital. Forty doctors (91% of medical staff) were observed for ...

It is temptingly easy to treat improvement interventions as if they are drugs—technical, stable and uninfluenced by the environment in which they work. Doing so makes life so much easier for everyone.

Conclusions The observed patterns suggest that RR is inaccurately recorded, even among those with cardiopulmonary compromise, and represents a ‘spot’ estimate with values of 18 and 20 breaths per ...

This is the first of a four-part series of articles examining the epistemology of patient safety research. Parts 2 and 3 will describe different study designs and methods of measuring outcomes in the ...

Background Healthcare leaders look to high-reliability organisations (HROs) for strategies to improve safety, despite questions about how to translate these strategies into practice. Weick and ...

Background/context Unnecessary laboratory testing leads to considerable healthcare costs. Aspartate aminotransferase (AST), commonly ordered with alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and blood urea nitrogen ...

Problem: Medication management in the NHS has been highlighted by the UK Department of Health as an area for improvement. Pharmacist participation on post-take (post-admission) ward rounds was shown ...

Background Unrecognised changes in a hospitalised patient’s clinical course may lead to a preventable adverse event. Early warning systems (EWS) use patient data, such as vital signs, nursing ...