Assessing equipment, supplies, and devices for patient safety issues (31 March 2023)

Summary

Medical equipment, supplies, and devices (ESD) serve a critical function in healthcare delivery and how they function can have an impact on patient safety. ESD-related safety issues include malfunctions, physically missing ESDs, sterilisation and usability. Describing ESD-related safety issues from a human factors perspective that focuses on user interactions with ESDs can provide additional insights to address these issues.

This article in the journal Patient Safety reviewed ESD patient safety event reports submitted to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System to identify ESD-related safety issues.