RaDonda Vaught, the former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse who accidentally gave a patient a fatal dose of the wrong medicine, was sentenced to three years of supervised probation with no jail time. In March, Vaught was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and gross neglect of an impaired adult. The case has created a national debate on the ethics and efficacy of criminalizing medical errors, often to the dismay of nurses and healthcare professionals.

A survey of physicians found that a significant proportion of the clinicians had experienced mistreatment in the prior year, with patients and visitors the most common source of abuse, a new research article says.

Mistreatment of healthcare staff including workplace violence has become a pressing national issue. In March, American Hospital Association President and CEO Richard Pollack wrote a letter to Merrick Garland urging the U.S. attorney general to back legislation to protect healthcare workers from assault and intimidation. "For medical professionals, being assaulted or intimidated can no longer be tolerated as 'part of the job.' This unacceptable situation demands a federal response," Pollack wrote.

The Leapfrog Group conducted an analysis of 2,844 U.S. hospitals, and one-third of the facilities earned an “A” grade for patient safety.

Patient safety has been a pressing issue in healthcare since 1999, with the publication of the landmark report To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Despite two decades of attention, estimates of annual patient deaths due to medical errors have risen steadily to as many as 440,000 lives, a figure that was reported in the Journal of Patient Safety in 2013.

This week, our friends from Chicagoland unveiled the Top 5 Most Challenging Requirements for the usual run of accredited healthcare programs.

Lance Woolf, MBA, CHSP, former life safety surveyor for The Joint Commission, knows what’s top of mind for those charged with healthcare facilities management. Woolf currently is the director of life safety compliance at facilities compliance solutions provider Soleran, located in Overland Park, Kansas.

We caught up with Woolf and Paul Acre, PE, CHFM, Life Safety Code^® and regulation compliance consultant, to discuss a variety of compliance tips and hot topics in the arenas of facilities management and life safety compliance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a great many things for healthcare, but it may have a particularly lasting impact on infection prevention programs. As the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology commented in a statement, “The pandemic has highlighted the need to strengthen infection prevention and antibiotic stewardship programs through additional personnel, resources, and training. These investments will support standard infection prevention and patient safety efforts while ensuring the capacity to prepare for future pandemics across the spectrum of healthcare.

Update: On May 13, Vaught was sentenced to three years probation 

The tragedy of medical errors is twofold—that a caregiver unintentionally harms someone they were trying to help, and that the error is usually preventable. When an error costs someone’s life, the first response is typically to assign blame and punishment. March 25 gave us a clear example of this. That’s when former nurse RaDonda Vaught was convicted of gross neglect of an impaired adult and negligent homicide in Tennessee. In 2017, Vaught mistakenly gave an elderly patient a paralyzing medication instead of a sedative, resulting in the patient’s death. The investigation found that Vaught overlooked several warning signs, and she now faces up to eight years in prison.

The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) extended the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) another 90 days, but there are indications it might not last much longer.

In recognition that armed conflicts can have a wide-ranging impact, the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response’s Technical Resources, Assistance Center, and Information Exchange (ASPR TRACIE) has put together a list of resources for such things as preparing for traumatic injuries, cyberattacks, biological and chemical incidents, and related mental healthcare.