Threats to patient safety in the primary care office: concerns of physicians and nurses

Little is known about primary care professionals' concerns about risks to patient safety. To identify threats to patient safety in the primary care office from the perspective of physicians and nurses. Cross-sectional survey; participants were asked to name and rank threats to safety they perso...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Swiss medical weekly 2012, Vol.142 (2324), p.w13601-w13601
Main Authors: Schwappach, David L B, Gehring, Katrin, Battaglia, Markus, Buff, Roman, Huber, Felix, Sauter, Peter, Wieser, Markus
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude of Health Personnel
Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
general practice
Humans
Male
Medical Errors
Middle Aged
Nurses - psychology
Patient Safety
Physicians - psychology
Primary Health Care
Qualitative Research
Surveys and Questionnaires
Switzerland
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Summary:Little is known about primary care professionals' concerns about risks to patient safety. To identify threats to patient safety in the primary care office from the perspective of physicians and nurses. Cross-sectional survey; participants were asked to name and rank threats to safety they personally were most concerned about. Physicians and nurses working in primary care offices in Switzerland. Verbatim reports were analysed under an inductive content-analysis framework. Coded threats were quantitatively analysed in terms of frequency and prioritisation. Differences between physicians and nurses were analysed. Of 1260 invited individuals, 630 responded to the survey and 391 (31%) described 936 threats to patient safety. The coding system included 29 categories organised in 5 themes. Agreement of coders was good (kappa = 0.87, CI = 0.86-0.87). Safety of medication (8.8%), triage by nurses (7.2%) and drug interactions (6.8%) were the threats cited most frequently. Errors in diagnosis (OR = 0.21, CI 0.09-0.47, p
ISSN:1424-7860
1424-3997
DOI:10.4414/smw.2012.13601