A Patient Safety Toolkit for Family Practices

Stephen M Campbell, Brian G Bell, Katherine Marsden, Rachel Spencer, Umesh Kadam, Katherine Perryman, Sarah Rodgers, Ian Litchfield, David Reeves, Anthony Chuter, Lucy Doos, Ignacio Ricci-Cabello, Paramjit Gill, Aneez Esmail, Sheila Greenfield, Sarah Slight, Karen Middleton , Jane Barnet, Michael Moore, Jose M ValderasAziz Sheikh, Anthony J Avery

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Objectives: Major gaps remain in our understanding of primary care patient safety. We describe a toolkit for measuring patient safety in family practices. Methods: Six tools were used in 46 practices. These tools were: NHS Education for Scotland Trigger Tool, NHS Education for Scotland Medicines Reconciliation Tool, Primary Care Safequest, Prescribing Safety Indicators, PREOS-PC, and Concise Safe Systems Checklist. Results: PC-Safequest showed that most practices had a well-developed safety climate. However, the Trigger Tool revealed that a quarter of events identified were associated with moderate or substantial harm, with a third originating in primary care and avoidable. Although medicines reconciliation was undertaken within 2 days in >70% of cases, necessary discussions with a patient/carer did not always occur. The prescribing safety indicators identified 1,435 instances of potentially hazardous prescribing or lack of recommended monitoring (from 92,649 patients). The Concise Safe Systems Checklist found that 25% of staff thought their practice provided inadequate follow-up for vulnerable patients discharged from hospital and inadequate monitoring of non-collection of prescriptions. Most patients had a positive perception of the safety of their practice although 45% identified at least one safety problem in the past year.Conclusions: Patient safety is complex and multidimensional. The Patient Safety Toolkit is easy to use and hosted on a single platform with a collection of tools generating practical and actionable information. It enables family practices to identify safety deficits that they can review and change procedures to improve their patient safety across a key sets of patient safety issues.
Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Patient Safety
Early online date15 Feb 2018
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 15 Feb 2018

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