Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: There is been an increasing awareness by health care providers, organisations and policy \nadvisors that patient safety and quality is an important issue, since primary care is the first \npoint of contact with the healthcare system for most patients. Patient safety is generally not \nconsidered to be a problem in primary care but there is evidence that this is not the case. \nPatient safety incidents have been predicted to occur from 2% [1] to 10% [2] of \nconsultations. The majority of errors in primary care fall within the categories of medication \nerrors [3], diagnostic errors [4] and communication errors [5]. Getting patient opinions is one \napproach to address these errors as evidence suggests that patients are able to identify \npotential primary-care errors [6–8]. Patients have a different perspective on safety and \npatient harm, and can provide insights to prevent errors [9, 10] as well as identify factors \ncontributing to patient safety incidents [8, 11]. \nA questionnaire, the Patient Measure Of Safety (PMOS), has been developed to collect \npatient feedback on the factors contributing to safety incidents in secondary care [11, 12]. \nThis was based around the Yorkshire Contributing Factors Framework [13] that identified 20 \nfactors contributing to safety incidents. In primary care, however, patient feedback tends to \nfocus on experience and satisfaction [14], or on after-event reporting and incident disclosure \n[15]. Patient-safety questionnaires for primary care do exist [16, 17] but no questionnaire \nhas been explicitly developed that comprehensively measures factors contributing to patient \nsafety-incidents. \nHealth-care professionals in primary care could use patient feedback to improve safety in \nthe same way health professionals do in hospital settings. Therefore, the principle aim of \nthis study was to adapt the PMOS into a primary-care patient measure of safety (PC PMOS) \nquestionnaire to be used as a basis for proactively managing safety and service \nimprovement in the primary-care setting; and test the PC PMOS in regional general \npractices.
Author: Andrea Hernan
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2784895330