Clinical Risk Management: As Modern Tool for Prevention and Management of Care and Prevention Occupational Risk

Dear Colleagues,

Patient safety is a growing concern in many countries, and deciphering available data and improving risk management policies are at the heart of future healthcare systems.

Over the years, the publication of the reports of the Institute of Medicine “To err is human”, “To cross the chasm of quality” and “Organization of the NHS” has shown that 8%–16.7% of patients admitted to hospitals suffer an adverse event, at least half of which are preventable. This entails enormous economic costs related to increases in hospital stay and the therapies implemented and can lead to unnecessary injuries or deaths that lead to medical liability cases. Although the subject of patient safety is so current, some disciplines struggle to produce valid analyses and therefore to set up a systematic management of clinical risks.

For example, one of the less explored disciplines today is mental health, where there is a “lack of awareness of the problems, as well as a lack of research and information on the subject”. A comprehensive review of the literature highlights an inconsistency in the basic concepts of patient safety in mental health (e.g., definition and calculation of adverse events), as well as a lack of research on high-quality patient safety in mental health. The reporting of adverse events should be encouraged in order to maintain the underpinning safety climate in order to prompt corrective and improvement actions.

In addition, the introduction of clinical risk management policies concerns both patient safety and health personnel safety, and in this perspective, there are few studies in the fields of ergonomics, infectious risk, biological risk, and environmental risk, all of which deserve further exploration. The current pandemic we are experiencing due to COVID-19 has raised a whole series of new problems that compound the issues of patient and healthcare worker safety. In this regard, an important issue is precisely the evaluation and management of biological, physical, and chemical risk in clinical-care and necropsy activities.

Questions from physicians working on the front line and a series of recommendations have been developed referring to documents and papers published by national institutions and international scientific societies and journals.

Work system processes involve a variety of factors, and according to the SEIPS Human Factors approach, to be able to assess a work system and how it is organized, we also need to assess:

1. Team and organizational culture and communication
2. Environment
3. Tasks required and skills to complete tasks
4. Equipment for patient care and to protect staff
5. The people needed to provide care
6. The patients who will receive care

In this Special Issue on “Clinical Risk Management”, we invite front-line researchers and investigators to submit both original research and review articles regarding— but not limited to—the following potential topics:

• National rules and laws in clinical risk management
• Clinical risk management policies
• Medical liability
• Patient safety indicator
• Adverse events
• Violence against health workers
• Suicide risk prevention
• Adverse drug reactions
• Environmental risks for healthcare personnel
• Biological risk
• Healthcare-associated infections

Prof. Stefano Ferracuti
Dr. Raffaele La Russa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• clinical risk management
• medical liability
• HAI
• ADR
• suicide
• violence
• environmental risk