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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Sources of unsafe primary care for older adults
— a mixed-methods analysis of patient safety incident reports | | Author(s) | Alison Cooper, Adrian Edwards, Huw Williams |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 46, no 5, September 2017 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, September 2017 |
| Pages | pp 833-839 |
| Full text* | https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article-abstract/46/5/833/3572914 |
| Annotation | Older adults are frequent users of primary healthcare services but are at increased risk of healthcare-related harm in this setting. The objective of this study was to describe factors associated with actual or potential harm to patients aged 65 years and older treated in primary care and to identify action to produce safer care. This was a cross-sectional mixed-methods analysis of a national (England and Wales) database of patient safety incident reports from 2005 to 2013. 1,591 primary care patient safety incident reports regarding patients aged 65 years and older were looked at, in which the authors developed a classification system for the analysis of patient safety incident reports to describe: the incident and preceding chain of incidents, other contributory factors and patient harm outcome. The authors combined findings from exploratory descriptive and thematic analyses to identify key sources of unsafe care. Main sources of unsafe care in this weighted sample were due to: medication-related incidents, e.g. prescribing, dispensing and administering; communication-related incidents e.g., incomplete or non-transfer of information across care boundaries; and clinical decision-making incidents which led to the most serious patient harm outcomes. Priority areas for further research to determine the burden and preventability of unsafe primary care for older adults include: timely electronic tools for prescribing, dispensing and administering medication in the community; electronic transfer of information between healthcare settings; and better clinical decision-making support and guidance. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-171006207 A |
| Classmark | L5: LK: BBE: CA3: OK7: OKA: 6K: 4C |
| *Online access to the full text may require a payment |
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