Organizational Resources

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). QI Guide on Improved Nursing Care.

Includes fact sheets, toolkits, studies, implementation guides, and more on topics including pressure ulcers to handoffs.

AHRQ - Patient Safety Network.

"AHRQ’s Patient Safety Network (PSNet) features a collection of the latest news and resources on patient safety, innovations and toolkits, opportunities for free CME and trainings. The platform provides powerful searching and browsing capability, as well as the ability for users to customize the site around their interests (My Profile)."

American Hospital Association (AHA). Quality & Patient Safety.

Includes information and resources on: infection control, emergency readiness, standards, surveys, and accreditation, reducing healthcare disparities, quality measurement & star ratings, and appropriate use of medical resources.

Institute for Healthcare Improvement

IHI is a Boston-based non-profit organization which uses improvement science to advance and sustain better outcomes in health and health care across the world.

The Joint Commission. National Patient Safety Goals.

Each year the Joint Commission gathers information about emerging patient safety issues from experts and stakeholders, and presents this information in the National Patient Safety Goals. There are program specific goals for: ambulatory health care, assisted living community, behavioral health care and human services, critical assess hospital, home care, hospital, laboratory, nursing care, and office-based surgery.

World Health Organization. Patient Safety.

"The WHO Patient Safety flagship initiative cuts across different areas of work within the Organization, focusing on linkages between patient safety and health care safety components across the different health systems elements, and linkages with disease-specific and clinical programmes which have a direct impact on patient safety and health outcomes at the point of care."

Peruse the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030.

Searching for evidence

Searching for evidence is an integral step of evidence-based practice. See the page PICO + Evidence-Based Practice for tips and more information.

Systems Thinking

"Systems thinking is an approach to understanding and improving complex issues and situations. It attempts to deal with these as wholes rather than through the reductionism of conventional science. Reductionism understands complex issues by examining smaller and smaller parts. Systems thinking sees the whole as different from the sum of its parts, because of the interactions between the parts. The issue for systems thinkers then becomes one of defining a relevant whole." 

Coghlan, D., & Brydon-Miller, M. (2014). The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (Vols. 1-2). London, : SAGE Publications Ltd. 

Readings

Patient Safety Ebooks