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Since the publication of the report “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” by the US Institute of Medicine in 2000, much has changed with regard to patient safety. Many of the more recent initiatives to improve patient safety target the behavior of health care staff (e.g., training, double-checking procedures, and standard operating procedures). System-based interventions have so far received less attention, even though they produce more substantial improvements, being less dependent on individuals’ behavior. One type of system-based intervention that can benefit patient safety involves improvements to hospital design. Given that people’s working environments affect their behavior, good design at a systemic level not only enables staff to work more efficiently; it can also prevent errors and mishaps, which can have serious consequences for patients. While an increasing number of studies have demonstrated the effect of hospital design on patient safety, this knowledge is not easily accessible to clinicians, practitioners, risk managers, and other decision-makers, such as designers and architects of health care facilities. This is why the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation launched its project, “More Patient Safety by Design: Systemic Approaches for Hospitals,” which is presented in this chapter.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a contingent valuation (CV) survey of health care services, designed to illuminate self-interest and benevolence on the part of one sex for the other.

In a constructed scenario, men and women recorded how much they would be willing to contribute to each of three different types of cancer screening, one of which would be available only to members of the opposite sex.

Over two-thirds of individuals, amongst whom men were more heavily represented, chose an identical CV for all three services. Amongst those who nominated dissimilar values, a willingness to contribute to own-sex screening coupled with an unwillingness to contribute to opposite-sex screening was more common amongst women than amongst men. Both sexes valued own-sex screening more highly than opposite-sex screening yet, compared with men, women were prepared to offer proportionately less for the latter relative to the former. In an associated person trade-off task, women were considerably less likely than men to choose opposite-sex screening at the expense of a type from which they could benefit personally.

To date, very little research has been undertaken on differential responses to health valuation of care provision by sex. The results suggest a degree of asymmetry between the sexes, with respect to self-interest and benevolence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of operating room staff towards the use of the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist in a tertiary hospital in Jordan.

This was a qualitative descriptive study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of 21 healthcare staff employed in the operating room (nurses, residents, surgeons and anaesthesiologists). The interviews were conducted in the period from October to December 2021. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

Three main themes emerged from data analysis namely compliance with the surgical safety checklist, the impact of surgical safety checklist, and barriers and facilitators to the use of the surgical safety checklist. The use of the checklist was seen as enabling staff to communicate effectively and thus to accomplish patient safety and positive outcomes. The perceived barriers to compliance included excessive workload, congestion and lack of training and awareness. Enhanced training and education were thought to improve the utilization of the surgical safety checklist, and help enhance awareness about its importance.

While steps to utilize the surgical safety checklist by the operation room personnel may seem simple, the quality of its administration is not necessarily robust. There are several challenges for consistent, complete and effective administration of the surgical safety checklist by the surgical team members. Healthcare managers must employ interventions to eliminate barriers to and offer facilitators of adherence to the application of the surgical safety checklist, therefore promoting quality healthcare and patient safety.

The aim of this study is to explore the link between green manufacturing practices, operational competitiveness, firm reputation and sustainable performance dimensions as well as advance a mediation approach.

The study resorted to structured questionnaire to collect data from 158 manufacturing firms from different industries, and partial least square–structural equation modelling is used to test all hypothesized relationships.

The results indicate that green manufacturing has a positive significant impact on social, economic and environmental performance. However, firm reputation and operational competitiveness were found not to significantly influence economic performance. The mediation analysis also showed that operational competitiveness, firm reputation and environmental performance play no mediation role between green manufacturing and economic performance. Furthermore, social performance is found to mediate the relationship between green manufacturing and economic performance.

The study did not consider any moderator variables. Also, the universal applicability and generalizability are somewhat a problem since data was mainly collected from Ghana, an emerging country.

The results provide managers with reasonable evidence to proactively implement and invest in green manufacturing practices because such practices will not only have a positive impact on their sustainable performance dimensions but further enhance operational competitiveness and provide firms with superior reputation.

The study provides significant findings that contribute to and expand the literature on green manufacturing, and it is among the relatively few studies that has investigated the link between green manufacturing, sustainable performance dimensions, firm reputation and operational competitiveness, especially from a mediation analysis perspective.