Patient safety priorities
- National Patient Safety Goals remain central to clinical expectations, focusing on correct ID, communication, medication safety, and infection prevention. - Hospitals are also promoting family escalation pathways that let patients and carers raise urgent safety concerns. - These standards shape what preceptors and evaluators expect during clinicals, so clear documentation and escalation habits matter ( ).
Patient safety rules still shape everyday hospital care, even as The Joint Commission begins replacing its old goals with a new hospital framework in 2026. (jointcommission.org) For hospitals, the 2025 National Patient Safety Goals told staff to use at least two patient identifiers, improve communication, reconcile medicines, prevent infection, reduce alarm delays, lower suicide risk, and address healthcare equity. The Joint Commission said those goals were assessed during accreditation surveys. (jointcommission.org; jointcommission.org) That framework changes for hospitals on January 1, 2026, when a new National Performance Goals chapter takes effect and replaces the former National Patient Safety Goals chapter for hospitals and critical access hospitals. The Joint Commission said the new chapter organizes hospital expectations into 14 measurable topics. (jointcommission.org) The core habits did not disappear in the rewrite. Joint Commission material for the new chapter still centers “right patient, right care,” while its infection-control standards continue to track hand hygiene and other safeguards tied to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization guidance. (jointcommission.org; jointcommission.org) Hospitals are also putting more weight on escalation systems that let patients and families say, in effect, that something is wrong before a crisis is obvious on a monitor. In New South Wales, the public system’s “Raise It” campaign tells patients, carers, and relatives to flag changes in how someone looks, breathes, talks, or acts. (health.nsw.gov.au; health.nsw.gov.au) New South Wales Health said the campaign followed a roundtable on April 30, 2025, convened by the Clinical Excellence Commission at the request of the state health minister and secretary. The commission said New South Wales has supported patient, carer, and family escalation for clinical deterioration since 2013 through its REACH program, now promoted publicly as Raise It. (health.nsw.gov.au; cec.health.nsw.gov.au) The Raise It process is deliberately simple: talk to a nurse or doctor, ask the nurse in charge for a clinical review if concerns remain, and then call a dedicated escalation line if the worry is still unresolved. Local New South Wales hospital pages list that final number as 1800 777 333. (mnclhd.health.nsw.gov.au; nslhd.health.nsw.gov.au) For nursing and other clinical students, these are not abstract policy points. The same expectations show up in bedside checks, medication passes, hand hygiene, charting, and the decision to escalate a concern early and document exactly what was seen, said, and done. (jointcommission.org; jointcommission.org; health.nsw.gov.au) The language is changing, but the bedside test is not: identify the right patient, communicate clearly, prevent avoidable harm, and speak up fast when a condition starts to slide. (jointcommission.org; health.nsw.gov.au)
