SOS is more than a maritime relic. It is proof that when people agree on a shared signal, they move faster, coordinate better, and save lives. That is the challenge we wrestle with from the 2026 APSF Stoelting Conference.  Healthcare is full of alarms, monitors, checklists, risk scores, and AI predictions, but we still struggle to agree on which safety signals truly matter, what they mean, and what we are supposed to do next to prevent harm across the perioperative continuum. This is the first part of our series on the 2026 APSF Stoelting Conference.

We dig into a barrier that quietly slows progress: mixing up quality and patient safety. From the patient’s view, quality asks whether care meets best practice, while safety is simpler and more urgent: “Please don’t harm me.” Real patient safety improvement leans on safety science, systems thinking, resilience, psychological safety, and human factors engineering. One memorable example makes it painfully concrete: a defibrillator design that can be accidentally powered off during a cardiac arrest, forcing a multi-minute reboot when seconds determine survival. The takeaway is clear: safer design beats another training module.

Then we zoom out to the 30,000-foot problem of perioperative mortality. Intraoperative deaths are now rare, but postoperative mortality remains common, with threats like myocardial injury after non-cardiac surgery, acute kidney injury, and respiratory complications. We talk about why intermittent ward vital signs miss dangerous hypoxemia and hypotension, why opioids (especially with sedatives) amplify risk, and why continuous vital sign monitoring and stronger postoperative medical management may be the next big step in anesthesia patient safety.

We wrap by connecting quality, safety, and revenue through analytics and clinical AI, including risk stratification and targeted post-discharge follow-up for high-risk patients. Subscribe for more Stoelting Conference highlights, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more perioperative teams can find the tools to keep patients safe.

For show notes & transcript, visit our episode page at apsf.org: https://www.apsf.org/podcast/327-sos-signals-for-perioperative-safety-stoelting-conference-series-part-1/

© 2026, The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation

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