Got alarm fatigue? Some doctors and nurses do, according to The Joint Commission, a nonprofit hospital accrediting organization. In their latest Sentinel Event Alert, issued April 8, the commission highlighted the dangers that result when doctors and other health professionals develop “alarm fatigue” or become desensitized and immune to alarm ...

At a critical point in a complex abdominal operation, a surgeon was handed a device that didn’t work because it had been loaded incorrectly by a surgical technician. Furious that she couldn’t use it, the surgeon slammed it down, accidentally breaking the technician’s finger. “I felt pushed beyond my limits,” ...

Missed or wrong diagnoses are common in primary care and may put some patients at risk of serious complications, according to a U.S. study. Mistakes in surgery and medication prescribing have been at the center of patient safety efforts, but researchers whose findings appeared in JAMA Internal Medicine said less ...

NEW YORK — Almost half of hospital doctors said they routinely see more patients than they can safely manage, leading in some cases to unneeded tests, medication errors and deaths, according to a survey by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Seven percent of 506 hospital-based physicians surveyed said their heavy ...

They sound like some of the worst mistakes a surgeon could make: Leaving an instrument inside a patient. Operating on the wrong body part — or the wrong person. They’re aptly named “never” events, the errors that should never, ever occur. Turns out, however, these “never” events happen quite frequently, ...

A national group has deemed 13 rural hospitals to be the best in the country. Of the 13, five are in Maine. “Maine has done something that’s really amazing,” said Missy Danforth, senior director for hospital ratings for the Leapfrog Group, a Washington D.C.-based organization that tracks health care safety, ...