Improving patient safety in Libya: insights from a British health system perspective.

Purpose Patient safety programmes aim to make healthcare safe for both patients and health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to explore the UK's patient safety improvement programmes over the past 15 years and explore what lessons can be learnt to improve Libyan healthcare patient safety. Design/methodology/approach Publications focusing on UK patient safety were searched in academic databases and content analysed.

Status of patient safety culture in Arab countries: a systematic review.

Objectives: To explore the status of patient safety culture in Arab countries based on the findings of the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSPSC).

Design: Systematic review.

Methods: We performed electronic searches of the MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, ProQuest and PsychINFO, Google Scholar and PubMed databases, with manual searches of bibliographies of included articles and key journals.

Quantifying the effect of complications on patient flow, costs and surgical throughputs.

Background: Postoperative adverse events are known to increase length of stay and cost. However, research on how adverse events affect patient flow and operational performance has been relatively limited to date. Moreover, there is paucity of studies on the use of simulation in understanding the effect of complications on care processes and resources.

Systematic review of factors influencing length of stay in ICU after adult cardiac surgery.

Background: Intensive care unit (ICU) care is associated with costly and often scarce resources. In many parts of the world, ICUs are being perceived as major bottlenecks limiting downstream services such as operating theatres. There are many clinical, surgical and contextual factors that influence length of stay.

Factors associated with prolonged length of stay following cardiac surgery in a major referral hospital in Oman: a retrospective observational study.

Objectives: Two objectives were set for this study. The first was to identify factors influencing prolonged postoperative length of stay (LOS) following cardiac surgery. The second was to devise a predictive model for prolonged LOS in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) based on preoperative factors available at admission and to compare it against two existing cardiac stratification systems.