Skip to main content

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: Closed 

Featured Article: Association between postoperative complications and hospital length of stay: a large-scale observational study of 4,495,582 patients in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS-NSQIP) registry.

New Content ItemHospital length of stay (LOS) represents an underappreciated quality measure in modern healthcare. Patients who stay hospitalized beyond their predicted geometric mean length of stay (GMLOS) have an increased risk of sustaining preventable hospital-acquired conditions. Similarly, patients who are “boarding” in the emergency department (ED) are deprived of access to an appropriate level of in-hospital care. Thus, improved patient flow based on safe and timely hospital discharges represents a driving force in patient safety both for ED “holds” and for inpatients. The current featured article was designed to investigate the relationship between occurrence of postoperative complications and the overall inpatient hospital LOS. In a large-scale retrospective observational cohort study, the authors queried the “American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program” (ACS-NSQIP) registry in a cohort of 4,495,582 patients during a time-window from 2005 to 2018. The occurrence of postoperative complications was associated with a highly significant increase in postoperative LOS for up to additional 20 days, after risk adjustment (P<0.0001). The most pertinent drivers of prolonged hospitalizations were ventilator-dependent days, wound healing complications, and acute renal failure. The insights from this large-scale multicenter registry analysis are important for surgeons and administrators as an imperative to reduce preventable surgical complications and hospital-acquired conditions to help streamline hospital LOS as a modern patient safety measure.

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

  • Citation Impact 2023
    Journal Impact Factor: 2.6
    5-year Journal Impact Factor: 2.7
    Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.587
    SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.602

    Speed 2023
    Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 4
    Submission to acceptance (median days): 41

    Usage 2023
    Downloads: 620,998
    Altmetric mentions: 168