[Can Quality of Patient Identification be Influenced by Training? - Results of a Randomised Multicentre Study with...

Background: Attributing clinical care to patients unambiguously is a precondition for patient safety. The German Coalition for Patient Safety has published a recommendation on this topic. Issue: The here presented study examined whether and to what extent documentation quality as one determining factor of correct patient identification can be improved positively by inter-professional training. Method: In our randomised multi-centric study physicians and nurses from 8 units in 4 hospitals were trained. The control group consisted of untrained unit teams. Effects of the intervention were measured by investigating documentation errors in clinical records before and after the training. Results: As a result of our intervention the number of documents with documentation errors/patient charts could be reduced by 37.3% (p<0.001). Conclusion: The results of the study point to the training of recommendations on preventing errors as an effective instrument for the improvement of patient safety.