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Tools for primary care patient safety : a narrative review
Tools
Spencer, Rachel and Campbell, Stephen M. (2014) Tools for primary care patient safety : a narrative review. BMC Family Practice, 15 (1). 166. doi:10.1186/1471-2296-15-166 ISSN 1471-2296.
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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-15-166
Abstract
Background
Patient safety in primary care is a developing field with an embryonic but evolving evidence base. This narrative review aims to identify tools that can be used by family practitioners as part of a patient safety toolkit to improve the safety of the care and services provided by their practices.
Methods
Searches were performed in 6 healthcare databases in 2011 using 3 search stems; location (primary care), patient safety synonyms and outcome measure synonyms. Two reviewers analysed the results using a numerical and thematic analyses. Extensive grey literature exploration was also conducted.
Results
Overall, 114 Tools were identified with 26 accrued from grey literature. Most published literature originated from the USA (41%) and the UK (23%) within the last 10 years. Most of the literature addresses the themes of medication error (55%) followed by safety climate (8%) and adverse event reporting (8%). Minor themes included; informatics (4.5%) patient role (3%) and general measures to correct error (5%). The primary/secondary care interface is well described (5%) but few specific tools for primary care exist. Diagnostic error and results handling appear infrequently (<1% of total literature) despite their relative importance. The remainder of literature (11%) related to referrals, Out-Of-Hours (OOH) care, telephone care, organisational issues, mortality and clerical error.
Conclusions
This review identified tools and indicators that are available for use in family practice to measure patient safety, which is crucial to improve safety and design a patient safety toolkit. However, many of the tools have yet to be used in quality improvement strategies and cycles such as plan–do–study–act (PDSA) so there is a dearth of evidence of their utility in improving as opposed to measuring and highlighting safety issues. The lack of focus on diagnostics, systems safety and results handling provide direction and priorities for future research.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School |
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Journal or Publication Title: | BMC Family Practice | ||||||
Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. | ||||||
ISSN: | 1471-2296 | ||||||
Official Date: | 26 October 2014 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 15 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Article Number: | 166 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1186/1471-2296-15-166 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) |
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