Patients' safety: think and act locally

Examples of such practices include computerised entry of physicians' orders, bar-coding, medication reconciliation, lists of prohibited abbreviations, and presurgical time-outs to review a checklist of necessary tasks and safety items.3-6 This strategy has been widely accepted and generally beneficial; it has been particularly valuable in raising awareness of patients' safety and in fostering more widespread implementation of patients' safety programmes in health-care institutions.