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Patient Safety in Surgery Receives it's First Impact Factor

Please join us in celebrating the journal's first Impact Factor (2022) of 3.7! 

Patient Safety in Surgery has seen great success in the past few years, surpassing 500,000 article downloads in 2022. Excitingly, if trends continue as they are, we expect even more for 2023, with an average of nearly 60,000 downloads seen each month of this year so far!

We would like to thank our Editors-in-Chief, Prof Philip F Stahel and Prof Pierre-Alain Clavien, alongside all members of the Editorial Board, reviewers and authors for their contribution to the journal and it's success over the years.

If you would like to read more about the journal's history and recent success, please see a link below to an Editorial that Patient Safety in Surgery's Editors-in-Chief co-authored with several members of the Editorial Board to celebrate the journal's first impact factor.

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Scope and Mission

Patient Safety in Surgery is an open access PubMed-indexed journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles in the field of surgical patient safety, and beyond.

The journal’s mission is to provide an international forum for healthcare professionals to report, discuss, debate, and critically review all aspects of care delivery that impose a risk on patient safety, with the ultimate goal of eliminating preventable adverse events and improving patient outcomes on a larger scale.

Special Issue: The Global Impact of Antibiotic Resistance on Emergency Surgery and Patient Safety

Patient Safety in Surgery is taking part in a special issue in collaboration with World Journal of Emergency Surgery to address the global burden of antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance on surgery and patient safety before, during, and after surgery, with a particular interest in the emergency surgery setting.

Guest Editor: Massimo Sartelli, MD, Global Alliance for Infections in Surgery & Macerata Hospital, Italy.

Submission Status: Open until 31 October 2024.

Collection: Machine learning approach for improvement of patient safety in surgery

Guest Editors:
Kathryn Holland: Mission Health, United States
Roy Nanz: Mission Health, United States
Submission Status: Open until 1 April 2024

Featured Article: The Rothman Index predicts unplanned readmissions to intensive care associated with increased mortality and hospital length of stay: a propensity-matched cohort study

Rothman Index (Stahel et al. 2024)Patients readmitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) for clinical deterioration after transfer to a lower level of inpatient care (so-called “bouncebacks”) are vulnerable to complications and preventable adverse outcomes. The current featured article investigated the value of predictive analytics using the “Rothman Index” as an objective grading tool to determine safe patient downgrades from intensive care. 

The authors found that the “Rothman Index” represented a sensitive predictor of unplanned ICU readmissions which were associated with significantly increased mortality and overall hospital length of stay at large tertiary referral hospital in the United States. The results from this study suggest that predictive data analytics can be leveraged as “real-time” objective measures to determine safe patient downgrades from ICU to a lower level of care.

About the Editor

"This is an exciting time to be involved in promoting a global culture of patient safety among all healthcare providers, particularly for the next generation of physicians and surgeons. Current patient safety protocols continue to fall short of protecting our patients from suffering unintended harm. Our journal provides a forum for reporting, discussing, and designing new patient safety standards for the future."

– Philip F. Stahel, Editor-in-Chief

Sign up to receive article alerts

Patient Safety in Surgery is published continuously online-only and so we encourage you to sign up to receive free email alerts to keep up to date with all of the latest articles by registering here.

Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    3.7 - 2-year Impact Factor
    3.0 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.889 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.738 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    4 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    41 days submission to accept (Median)

    2023 Usage 
    620,998 downloads
    168 Altmetric mentions