Developing and pilot testing practical measures of preanalytic surgical specimen identification defects.

Accurate patient identification is a National Patient Safety Goal. Misidentification of surgical specimens is associated with increased morbidity, mortality, and costs of care. The authors developed 12 practical, process-based, standardized measures of surgical specimen identification defects during the preanalytic phase of pathology testing (from the operating room to the surgical pathology laboratory) that could be used to quantify the occurrence of these defects.

Improving healthcare quality through organisational peer-to-peer assessment: lessons from the nuclear power industry.

Healthcare has made great efforts to reduce preventable patient harm, from externally driven regulations to internally driven professionalism. Regulation has driven the majority of efforts to date, and has a necessary place in establishing accountability and minimum standards. Yet they need to be coupled with internally driven efforts.

Toward improving patient safety through voluntary peer-to-peer assessment.

Health care has primarily used retrospective review approaches to identify and mitigate hazards, with little evidence of measurable and sustained improvements in patient safety. Conversely, the nuclear power industry has used a prospective peer-to-peer (P2P) assessment process grounded in open information exchange and cooperative organizational learning to realize substantial and sustainable improvements in safety. In comparing approaches, it is evident that health care's sluggish progress stems from weaknesses in hazard identification and mitigation and in organizational learning.

Chest radiographic anatomy retention: the impact of preclinical groundwork on clinical recall in two schools.

Rationale And Objectives: The aim of this study was to verify earlier work on learning and retaining chest radiographic anatomy introduced during preclinical education and revisited in the clinical years by comparing the initial clinical group to clinical students in a second setting who had no preclinical exposure.

Materials And Methods: One hundred thirty-seven clinical medical students were pretested and posttested on the same 10 items as were used in the first study. Scores on these 10-item standardized pretests and posttests were compared and assessed for statistical significance.