AHRQ: 10 Patient Safety Tips for Hospitals

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently updated their publication titled "10 Patient Safety Tips for Hospitals".

The 10 Tips are:

1. Prevent central line-associated blood stream infections.
2. Re-engineer hospital discharges.
3. Prevent venous thromboembolism.
4. Educate patients about using blood thinners safely.
5. Limit shift durations for medical residents and other hospital staff if possible.
6. Consider working with a Patient Safety Organization.
7. Use good hospital design principles.
8. Measure your hospital's patient safety culture.
9. Build better teams and rapid response systems.
10. Insert chest tubes safely.

The AHRQ publications contains links to resources supporting each of the above tips. The publication can be found here: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/10tips.pdf.

The home page of the publication is here: http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/10tips.htm