Mapping patient safety: a large-scale literature review using bibliometric visualisation techniques.

Area of Science:

• Bibliometrics
• Information Science
• Health Services Research

Background:

• The vast volume of scientific literature presents challenges for researchers in understanding complex topics like patient safety (PS).
• Bibliometric visualization techniques offer a method to navigate and analyze large bodies of literature, revealing connections and trends.
• This study applies bibliometric visualization to the field of patient safety research published between 2000 and 2010.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide an overview of patient safety literature using bibliometric data.
• To identify key research topics and trends in patient safety.
• To inform future research directions and priorities in patient safety.

Main Methods:

• Identified 8480 publications related to patient safety from the Scopus database (2000-2010).
• Created visualizations based on citation networks of the 1462 most cited publications.
• Extracted and visualized key terms from titles and abstracts.
• Clustered publications and terms to identify main research themes.

Main Results:

• Publications clustered into three main categories: magnitude of PS problems (42%), PS risk factors (31%), and implementation of solutions (19%).
• Key terms visualized into five clusters: medication, measuring harm, PS culture, physician, and training/education/communication.
• Analysis indicated an increasing focus on patient safety risk factors over the study period.

Conclusions:

• Bibliometric visualization is effective for analyzing extensive literature on complex topics like patient safety.
• The approach aids in understanding research landscapes and identifying new research priorities.
• Findings suggest a need for increased research on the implementation of patient safety improvement initiatives.