Nature and type of patient-reported safety incidents in primary care: cross-sectional survey of patients from Australia and England
Of 1329 patients (490 England; 839 Australia) completing the Primary Care Patient Measure of Safety questionnaire, 5.3% reported a safety incident over the preceding 12 months, most commonly administration incidents (31%) and incidents involving diagnosis and assessment (18.4%).
Source:
BMJ Open
SPS commentary:
The authors, while acknowledging the various limitations to their study, note that the types of safety incidents reported by patients seem to differ from those reported by staff or identified during record review studies. They comment that their findings emphasise the importance of capturing patient-reported safety incidents in the primary care setting, noting the patient perspective can complement existing sources of safety intelligence with the potential for service improvement.