Understanding Patient Safety, Second Edition

Gain a thorough understanding of the key principles of patient safety with the subject's pioneer text -- Now in full color

A Doody's Core Title for 2015!

"This highly readable yet comprehensive book will appeal to every member of the healthcare team. It is a must for every physician's bookshelf."
-- Abraham Verghese, MD, Professor, Stanford University andauthor of the bestselling Cutting for Stone

"Bob Wachter's quest to improve the safety of American healthcare represents the very essence of a physician's duty to put the patient first. His unflinching candor about the nature and magnitude of our current safety problems is matched only by his passion forimprovement."
-- Mark R. Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, President, The Joint Commission

"Amazingly readable for such a wealth of important information. This book should be required reading for every health professional and every healthcare executive."
-- Christine Cassel, MD, President and CEO, American Board of Internal Medicine

"In a single volume, Wachter accomplishes the seemingly impossible: furnishing the novice with a highly accessible, easy-to-read introduction to patient safety, while providing a comprehensive, fully annotated reference for the experienced patient safety practitioner. All of the important issues are addressed in individual chapters, each with a lively and relevant clinical example and a “key points” summary at the end bracketing full, balancedand lucid descriptions. A true gem, destined to be a close companion for all of us who strive to make healthcare safe."
-- Lucian Leape, MD, Professor, Harvard School of Public Health and Chair, Lucian Leape Institute of the National Patient Safety Foundation

"There's no more prominent authority on patient safety than Bob Wachter. And there's no more effective primer on patient safety than this one."
-- Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School, staff writer for the New Yorker, and bestselling author of Complications and The Checklist Manifesto

"Compelling: a must read for all concerned with patient safety. Bob Wachter has a unique voice, incorporating clinical experience, research expertise, and policy implications…all with the patient front and center."
-- Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, Professor and Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Understanding Patient Safety, Second Edition is the essential book for anyone seeking to learn the core clinical, organizational, and systems issues of patient safety. Written in an engaging and accessible style by one of the world’s leading authorities on patient safety and quality, Understanding Patient Safety is filled with valuable cases and analyses, as well as tables, graphics, references, and tools. This classic reference is designed to make the patient safety field understandable to medical, nursing, pharmacy, hospital administration, and other trainees, and to be the go-to book for experienced clinicians and non-clinicians alike.

The second edition has been revised to include coverage of the latest issues and trends, including:

• Information technology
• Measurements of safety, errors, and harm
• Checklist-based interventions
• Safety targets
• Policy issues in patient safety
• Balancing “no blame” and accountability

Understanding Patient Safety, Second Edition delivers key insights to help you understand and prevent aa broad range of errors, including those related to medications, surgery, diagnosis, infections, and nursing care. The crucial contextual issues -- including errors at the person-machine interface, the role of culture, patient engagement in their own safety, and workforce and trainee considerations, are also well covered. Finally, the book provides a practical overview of how to organize an effective safety program, in both hospitals and clinics.

Robert M. Wachter, MD
Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Medicine University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Wachter, author of more than 250 articles and six books, coined the term "hospitalist" in 1996 and is considered one of the world's leading experts on patient safety and healthcare quality. Still a practicing clinician, he edits the US federal government's two leading patient safety websites (which receive 3 million yearly visitors), co-authored the bestseller "Internal Bleeding," and is a recipient of the John M. Eisenberg award, the nation's leading honor in patient safety. For the past six years, Modern Healthcare magazine has named him as one of the 50 most influential physicians in the United States. He is immediate past-chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine and writes a popular and influential blog, "Wachter's World."