Patient safety pearls

Abstract

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.