A cross-sectional mixed methods study protocol to generate learning from patient safety incidents reported from...

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Quality and Safety
• General Practice Medicine
• Patient Safety Research

Background:

• Incident reports detail clinical errors and harms, but few studies have characterized general practice incidents.
• No prior studies have analyzed incidents from the England and Wales National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS).
• This research addresses the need to understand patient safety incidents within general practice settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe and characterize patient safety incidents reported from general practice.
• To develop a classification system for general practice patient safety incidents.
• To identify priority areas for future patient safety interventions in primary care.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel general practice patient safety incident classification system.
• Classification of a weighted-random sample of 12,500 incidents (no, low, moderate harm) and all severe harm/death incidents.
• Combination of exploratory descriptive statistics and thematic analysis for comprehensive insights.

Main Results:

• Characterization of patient safety incidents in general practice is ongoing.
• The study will provide detailed statistics on incident types, severity, and contributing factors.
• Thematic analysis will reveal patterns and common themes in reported incidents.

Conclusions:

• The findings will offer crucial insights into patient safety in general practice.
• This study aims to inform the development of targeted interventions to reduce harm.
• Results will be disseminated to researchers, clinicians, and policymakers nationally and internationally.