Journal of Patient Safety最新文献

Purpose: The aim of the study is to identify the most common avoidable patient injuries related to hallux valgus surgery.

Methods: We assessed the claims reported to the Norwegian System of Patient Injury Compensation (NPE) following surgery for hallux valgus in light of hospital volume. Data from NPE was categorized according to age, sex, reason for claim, and reason for accepted/rejected claim. The institutions were grouped by catchment population into low volume (<150,000), middle volume (150,000-300,000), and high volume (>300,000) institutions. The effect of hospital volume on the likelihood of an accepted claim was estimated.

Results: NPE received 369 claims of which 173 (46.9%) were accepted. The main reason for accepted claims was recurrence of the deformity, wrong level osteotomy or insufficient fixation. A quarter of the claims were accepted because of lack of indication and one in 5 accepted claims was due to a postoperative infection. Patient treated at low-volume institutions had a higher fraction of accepted claims ( P < 0.01). The odds ratio for an accepted claim in the low volume hospitals was 5.8 (95% confidence interval 4.1-8.3) compared with the middle- and high-volume institutions.

Conclusions: The likelihood of a treatment error that leads to compensation was higher in low-volume institutions.

Level of evidence: Level II Prospective cohort study.

Objectives: The aims of the study were to describe inpatient harm events detected via an automatic electronic trigger system (ETS) and to consider their financial consequences.

Methods: Over a 27-month period, inpatient harm events were identified and documented in 1 healthcare system with 37 acute care facilities. Patients who experienced harm (all harm or preventable harm only) were compared with similar patients who did not. Clinical, financial, and demographic data were used to identify labor-adjusted direct variable costs (DVC) and potential differences in length of stay (LOS) associated with all-harm, preventable-harm, and nonharmed cohorts. Age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index, case mix index, diagnosis-related groups, major diagnostic category, sex, age, location, diagnosis, adverse event category and subcategory, preventability, and harm severity were used to compare cohorts. Total harm events reported via the ETS and the health system's voluntary event reporting system were compared.

Results: Nearly 93,000 encounters for all-harm (n = 25,665) and nonharmed cohorts (n = 67,217) were compared by random sampling of diagnosis-related group-matched all-harm and nonharmed groups to ensure similar clinical conditions, as measured by Charlson Comorbidity Index and case mix index. Sampling (2 groups, n = 100 and n = 200) showed that increased LOS was associated with harm; yet other clinical comparators were similar across groups. the preventable-harm subcohort had longer LOS (10.7 versus 5.9 days) and higher DVC ($13,442 versus $8024) than the nonharmed cohort. Identification of harm events was nearly 6-fold higher with the ETS than with the voluntary event reporting system.

Conclusions: Patients with preventable harm had increased LOS that was associated with higher DVC per preventable-harm encounter in a large US healthcare system.

Abstract: Hospital-acquired conditions in the United States are considered avoidable complications but remain common statistics reflecting on health system performance and are a leading cause of patient fatality. Currently, over 3.7 million patients experience a hospital-acquired condition in the United States each year, which costs the U.S. healthcare delivery system an excess of $48 billion. Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for common hospital-acquired conditions (e.g., infections, falls, pressure injuries) to reduce risk to the patient. In each of these instances, preventing the outcome with these guidelines costs less than treating the outcome, in addition to keeping the patient safe from harm. By applying the framework of defects in value to hospital-acquired conditions, we estimate that U.S. health systems could avert this $48 billion in spending on treating harmful hospital-acquired conditions; more so, these systems of care could recuperate over $35 billion after investing proportionally in a system that delivers greater quality by preventing hospital-acquired conditions over treating them. Currently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services only withholds reimbursements for hospital-acquired conditions and penalizes health systems with high rates of these outcomes. However, payers do not offer any reward-based incentives for hospital-acquired condition prevention. A series of policy and health system solutions, including tracking of hospital-acquired condition rates in electronic health records, identifying centers of excellence at reducing rates of harm with the use of clinical practice guidelines, and rewarding them monetarily for reduced rates could create equal-sided risk and opportunity to engage health systems in improved performance.

Objectives: The study aim was to create an updated valid translation into Hebrew of the AHRQ's survey on patient safety culture for hospitals, version 2.0. It also suggested a supplementary section about workers' safety. Comparable and valid measurement tools are important for national and international benchmarking of patient safety culture in hospitals.

Methods: The process was carried out by a designated committee according to AHRQ translation guidelines. Methodology included several translation cycles, 6 semistructured cognitive interviews with health workers, and a web-based pilot survey at 6 general hospitals. Main analyses included an exploratory factor analysis, a comparison of the differences in results between versions 1 and 2 of the survey to the differences reported by AHRQ, and content analysis of open-ended questions.

Results: A total of 483 returned questionnaires met the inclusion criterion of at least 70% completion of the questionnaire. The demographic distributions suggested this sample to be satisfactory representative. Cronbach's alpha for the translated questionnaire was 0.95, meaning a high internal consistency between the survey items. An exploratory factor analysis revealed 8 underlying factors, and a secondary analysis further divided the first factor into 2 components. The factors structure generally resembled HSOPS 2.0 composite measures. Analyses of the new section about health workers' safety showed high involvement and possible common themes.

Conclusions: The study demonstrated good psychometric properties-high reliability and validity of the new translated version of the questionnaire. This paper may serve other countries who wish to translate and adapt the safety culture survey to different languages.

Aims: This study aimed to examine the relationship between work environment and missed nursing care (MNC) in nurses and determine whether profession self-efficacy has a moderator role in this relationship.

Design: A quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational study design was used to test the study model.

Methods: The study was conducted with 433 nurses in 2 city hospitals in Istanbul, Turkey. Data were collected between November 2022 and February 2023 using the "MISSCARE Survey-Turkish," the "Work Environment Scale," and the "Nursing Profession Self-Efficacy Scale."

Results: The participants had a mean Nursing Profession Self-Efficacy Scale score of 66.67 ± 14.37, a mean Work Environment Scale score of 84.96 ± 13.62, a mean elements of MNC score of 1.30 ± 0.73, and a mean reason for MNC score of 3.18 ± 0.78. Nursing profession self-efficacy was determined to be positively related to the work environment of the participants and their reasons for MNC (respectively, r = 0.276 and r = 0.114) and negatively related to elements of MNC ( r = -0.216) ( P < 0.05). There was also a negative relationship between the work environment and elements of MNC ( r = -0.249; P < 0.05). Profession self-efficacy had a significant moderator role in the relationship between the work environment and elements of MNC. Having low or moderate levels of profession self-efficacy moderated the negative effects of the work environment on elements of MNC.

Conclusions: There is a need for interventions to reduce elements of missed nursing care in nurses. Especially nurses and/or nurse managers may have difficulties in improving their work environment, considering its multifaceted structure. In such cases, administrators can reduce missed nursing care by increasing the profession self-efficacy of nurses. Therefore, profession self-efficacy should be considered in addition to interventions for the work environment to improve care.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine the incidence and types of adverse events (AEs), including preventable and ameliorable AEs, in patients transitioning from the emergency department (ED) to the inpatient setting. A second objective was to examine the risk factors for patients with AEs.

Methods: This was a prospective cohort study of patients at risk for AEs in 2 urban academic hospitals from August 2020 to January 2022. Eighty-one eligible patients who were being admitted to any internal medicine or hospitalist service were recruited from the ED of these hospitals by a trained nurse. The nurse conducted a structured interview during admission and referred possible AEs for adjudication. Two blinded trained physicians using a previously established methodology adjudicated AEs.

Results: Over 22% of 81 patients experienced AEs from the ED to the inpatient setting. The most common AEs were adverse drug events (42%), followed by management (38%), and diagnostic errors (21%). Of these AEs, 75% were considered preventable. Patients who stayed in the ED longer were more likely to experience an AE (adjusted odds ratio = 1.99, 95% confidence interval = 1.19-3.32, P = 0.01).

Conclusions: AEs were common for patients transitioning from the ED to the inpatient setting. Further research is needed to understand the underlying causes of AEs that occur when patients transition from the ED to the inpatient setting. Understanding the contribution of factors such as length of stay in the ED will significantly help efforts to develop targeted interventions to improve this crucial transition of care.

Objectives: One in 20 outpatients in the United States experiences a diagnostic error each year, but there are no validated methods for collecting feedback from patients on diagnostic safety. We examined patient experience surveys to determine whether patients' free text comments indicated diagnostic breakdowns. Our objective was to evaluate associations between patient-perceived diagnostic breakdowns reported in free text comments and patients' responses to structured survey questions.

Methods: We conducted an exploratory mixed methods study using data from patient experience surveys collected from adult ambulatory care patients March 2020 to June 2020 in a large U.S. health system. Data analysis included content analysis of qualitative data and statistical analysis of quantitative data.

Results: In 2525 surveys with negative comments, 619 patients (24.5%) identified diagnostic breakdowns, including issues with accuracy (n = 282, 46%), timeliness (n = 243, 39%), or communication (n = 290, 47%); some patients (n = 181) reported breakdowns in multiple categories. Patients who gave a low average score (50 or less on a 100-point scale) on provider questions were almost seven times more likely to perceive a diagnostic breakdown than patients who scored their provider higher. Similarly, patients who gave a low average score on practice-related questions were twice as likely to perceive a diagnostic breakdown.

Conclusions: Patient feedback in routinely collected patient experience surveys is a valuable and actionable information source on diagnostic breakdowns in the ambulatory setting. The more easily monitored structured survey data provide a screening method to identify encounters that may have included a patient-perceived diagnostic breakdown and therefore require further examination.