How safe is prehospital care? A systematic review

As compared to other domains of healthcare, little is known about patient safety incidents (PSIs) in prehospital care. The aims of our systematic review were to identify how the prevalence and level of harm associated with PSIs in prehospital care are assessed; the frequency of PSIs in prehospital care; and the harm associated with PSIs in prehospital care.

Searches were conducted of Medline, Web of Science, PsycInfo, CINAHL, Academic Search Complete and the grey literature. Reference lists of included studies and existing related reviews were also screened. English-language, peer-reviewed studies reporting data on number/frequency of PSIs and/or harm associated with PSIs were included. Two researchers independently extracted data from the studies and carried out a critical appraisal using the Quality Assessment Tool for Studies with Diverse Designs (QATSDD).

Of the 22 included papers, 16 (73%) used data from record reviews, and 6 (27%) from incident reports. The frequency of PSIs in prehospital care was found to be a median of 5.9 per 100 records/transports/patients. A higher prevalence of PSIs was identified within studies that used record review data (9.9 per 100 records/transports/patients) as compared to incident reports (0.3 per records/transports/patients). Across the studies that reported harm, a median of 15.6% of PSIs were found to result in harm. Studies that utilized record review data reported that a median of 6.5% of the PSIs resulted in harm. For data from incident reporting systems, a median of 54.6% of incidents were associated with harm. The mean QATSDD score was 25.6 (SD = 4.1, range = 16-34).

This systematic review gives direction as to how to advance methods for identifying PSIs in prehospital care and assessing the extent to which patients are harmed.