As 2019 draws to a close, the Journal of Patient Safety
and Risk Management has reached a milestone for a
new academic publishing enterprise: we have completed our first two full volumes. These are made up of 12
issues of research, case studies, descriptions of programs and policy, and related scholarship, on patient
safety and medicolegal risk.
In the Northern Hemisphere, we are approaching
the winter solstice and the longest nights of the year.
Also at hand are the corresponding festivities which
originally must have been intended at least in part to
ward off the dark and cold.
To observe the season, we offer gifts of wisdom on
patient safety and health care quality, nominated by
our editors and international editorial board.
In medicine, these bon mots are sometimes referred
to as “pearls.” Although a few are freshly minted, most
are venerable. As a rule, their origin is obscure. One of
our members described his offerings as grains of sand
rather than pearls, suggesting their potential to irritate
more than enlighten. But over the years they have been
repeated, paraphrased and repackaged on the wards by
countless clinicians, much like nursery rhymes reinvented on the playground by generations of small
children.