It is widely acknowledged that healthcare quality and patient safety (Q&PS) improvement is significantly impacted by the multiple, and often conflicting, day-to-day practice demands on staff’s time and/or opposing short-term and long-term priorities. Research has also identified that materiality strongly influences these dynamics. Yet, the role of the interplay between Q&PS improvement, temporality, and materiality has received scant research attention. This article fills this gap by building on Hernes and Schultz’s (2020) theoretical framework of situated temporality. The research utilised a qualitative case study conducted at a Portuguese University hospital. Data was collected through 46 in-depth semi-structured interviews involving 49 clinical and non-clinical staff. The findings illustrate that the interplay between Q&PS improvement, temporality, and materiality can contribute to both the emergence and the successful management of temporal tensions associated with Q&PS improvement. Namely, objects can contribute to lessen temporal tensions by acting as temporal bridges (foster hospital staff to remember past or imagine future events) or as temporal anchors (help staff to focus on the present moment) – two new concepts introduced in this article.The article also highlights healthcare staff’s agency in shaping the impact of temporality on Q&PS improvement as well as the importance of adopting a situated rather than deterministic conceptualization of time.