Book excerpt: With a wealth of helpful guidelines and assessment tools, Nursing Pathways for Patient Safety makes it easy to identify the causes of practice breakdowns and to reduce health care errors. It provides expert guidance from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), plus an overview of the TERCAP® assessment tool. The book systematically examines the causes of practice breakdowns resulting from practice styles, health care environments, teamwork, and structural systems to promote patient safety. - An overview of the NCSBN Practice Breakdown Initiative introduces the TERCAP® assessment tool and provides a helpful framework for understanding the scope of problems, along with NCSBN's approach to addressing them. - Coverage of each type of practice breakdown systematically explores errors in areas such as clinical reasoning or judgment, prevention, and intervention. - Case Studies provide real-life examples of practice breakdowns and help you learn to identify problems and propose solutions. - Chapters on mandatory reporting and implementation of a whole systems approach offer practical information on understanding TERCAP® and implementing a whole systems approach to preventing practice breakdowns.