Purpose

The Center on Patient Safety was established to promote and conduct innovative research designed to reduce medical errors and adverse events in all venues of care. The Center is actively engaged in the dissemination of scholarly research on patient safety to medical directors, physicians, policymakers, the media, and other organizations interested in improving patient safety and quality of care both locally and nationally. In addition, the Center provides continuing medical education for healthcare professionals on patient safety issues such as medical errors and adverse events.

Research

The Center has a primary interest in exploring patient safety issues in the following areas:

• Post-Discharge Adverse Events: identifying, analyzing, and developing strategies to understand the causes and prevent the occurrence of adverse events (e.g., drug-related, procedure-related, and nosocomial infections), when patients are discharged from the hospital to home.
• Geriatric Patient Safety: identifying, analyzing, and developing strategies to understand the causes and prevent the occurrence of medical errors/adverse events in the elderly.
• Pediatric Patient Safety: identifying, analyzing, and developing strategies to understand the causes and prevent the occurrence of medical errors/adverse events in children.
• Ambulatory Adverse Events: identifying, analyzing, and developing strategies to understand the causes and prevent the occurrence of adverse events that occur in the outpatient setting.
• Inpatient Medical Errors/Adverse Events: identifying, analyzing, applying strategies (e.g., AHRQ Hospital Patient Safety Indicators), and developing strategies to understand the causes and prevent the occurrence of inpatient medical errors/adverse events.