Patient involvement in reducing errors during X-ray imaging in an orthopedic outpatient clinic

The purpose of this study was to verify the effectiveness of patient involvement in identifying both patients and the location(s) before X-ray examinations at orthopedic clinics.

We analyzed the errors of the X-ray order in 2014 in our orthopedic outpatient clinic and categorized them into 6 categories. We looked at the errors from April to September 2014 (group I, preintervention), introduced the patient involvement system in March 2015 (intervention), and compared the errors from April to September 2015 (group II, postintervention).

The rate of X-ray prescription errors declined from 0.58% (group I, 79/13,617) to 0.08% (group II, 10/12,588). The most significant reduction in error rate was found in errors of left to right; there were 58 cases in group I and 5 cases in group II, a reduction rate of approximately 91%. The most common anatomical location of the error was the wrist and hand (27 of 89 cases, 30.3%). There was a significant difference between the ordered anatomical locations and the incidence of error in 2014 (P < .001), and we also obtained the same results for the relationship between the ordered anatomical locations and error types in 2014 (P < .001).

We found that patient involvement was effective in reducing errors in X-ray imaging in our orthopedic clinic, and we recommend its use in other medical fields with respect to left-to-right issues.