Risk Management and Healthcare Policy

Rethinking Patient Safety in Contemporary Healthcare: Leadership, Nursing, and Safer Systems

Patient safety remains a global healthcare priority, yet preventable harm continues to occur across acute, primary, community, long-term, mental health, and specialized care settings. Safe healthcare depends not only on technical competence and effective clinical processes, but also on organizational cultures that promote learning, transparency, accountability, compassion, and innovation. This Article Collection focuses on the interrelationship between patient safety, safety culture, just culture, the second victim phenomenon, quality management, digital transformation, and the contribution of nursing—including specialist and advanced nursing roles—to safer healthcare systems. Safety is shaped by clinical practice, leadership, communication, interprofessional collaboration, organizational governance, regulatory and health policy frameworks, system design, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Nurses, alongside multidisciplinary healthcare teams, play essential roles in identifying risks, preventing adverse events, responding to incidents, and shaping innovation in care delivery. This collection seeks to advance understanding of how healthcare organizations can create resilient, learning-oriented systems that support both patients and healthcare professionals within the multidisciplinary healthcare team.

Despite advances in patient safety science, healthcare-associated harm remains a persistent challenge with profound consequences for patients, families, healthcare professionals, and organizations. Adverse events not only compromise care quality and outcomes but may also create emotional and professional distress among healthcare workers involved in incidents, often described as the second victim phenomenon. Without supportive organizational responses, such experiences may contribute to burnout, reduced confidence, workforce attrition, and diminished capacity for safe care. Cultures characterized by blame and fear can suppress reporting, hinder learning, and weaken improvement efforts, whereas just culture approaches support fairness, trust, accountability, and organizational learning. Effective patient safety, therefore, requires not only local organizational action but also supportive policy environments that shape workforce planning, reporting systems, accountability structures, digital governance, and equitable access to safe care.

While AI offers opportunities for decision support, predictive risk detection, workflow optimization, and quality monitoring, it also raises important questions regarding safety, accountability, bias, trust, and implementation.

This Article Collection welcomes contributions addressing patient safety and quality management across all healthcare settings and populations. Relevant topics include:

• Safety culture assessment, implementation and improvement
• Compassionate, equitable, and technology-informed healthcare systems
• Just culture implementation and evaluation
• Second victim phenomenon and support interventions
• Nursing leadership for patient safety
• Contributions of specialist and advanced nursing roles to risk reduction and quality improvement
• Psychological safety and speaking-up behavior
• Incident reporting and organizational learning systems
• Workforce wellbeing and occupational health in healthcare settings
• Staffing levels, competence, and skill mix
• Human factors and systems thinking approaches to safety
• Digital safety in healthcare
• Artificial intelligence in patient safety, clinical decision support, and quality management
• Governance and risk management frameworks
• Patient and family engagement in safety and quality improvement
• Justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in safety practices and outcomes
• Interdisciplinary approaches to patient safety
• Implementation-focused safety research
• Comparative and systems-level perspectives

Various research designs are welcomed as follows:

• Original research studies (quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods designs)
• Literature reviews (Systematic reviews, scoping review, narrative review)
• Methodological papers and instrument development/validation
• Quality improvement evaluations
• Case-report
• Discussion paper
• Commentary

We also welcome submissions that address diverse aspects of healthcare risk management and policy, encompassing interdisciplinary perspectives, to foster a comprehensive understanding of challenges and solutions in the healthcare sector.

Please contact Haoyang Yi (Commissioning Editor) at [email protected] with any queries regarding this Article Collection.

Guest Advisors

Dr. Glarcher Manela

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Manela Glarcher, MSc, BSc, RN is a nursing scientist and healthcare quality professional based in Austria. Her work focuses on patient safety, safety culture, just culture, advanced nursing practice, and quality improvement across healthcare settings, with additional interests in digital transformation and artificial intelligence in healthcare. She combines academic research with practical experience in quality and risk management and is involved in international research and editorial activities in nursing and patient safety.

Dr. Mojtaba Vaismoradi

Dr. Mojtaba Vaismoradi specialize in medicines management and patient safety initiatives, focusing particularly on the integral role of nurses in ensuring medication safety in clinical settings. Additionally, Dr. Mojtaba Vaismoradi explore the utilization of non-pharmacologic techniques by nurses to enhance patient care and to address patient safety needs beyond the use of medications, fostering integrative, comprehensive and personalized care.