Patient Safety Indicator

The patient safety indicators were developed with exemplary thoroughness and due attention to a number of key issues affecting the validity and usefulness of the indicators. The full list of indicators is shown in Box 6.2, and some examples of definitions and outstanding issues in Box 6.3. It is critical to appreciate that the indicators do not necessarily indicate unsafe care and still less specific errors the clinician panels rated only severe transfusion reaction and retained foreign body as very likely to be due to error. While this is important for individual cases however, it is less critical when aggregating data over time. Any organization would like to reduce these events and once they... 

ADAPTED, IN PART, FROM PATIENT SAFETY INDICATORS OVERVIEW. AHRQ QUAUTY INDICATORS. FEBRUARY 2006. AGENCY FOR HEALTHCARE RESEARCH AND QUALITY, ROCKVILLE, MD. http //www.qualityindicators.ahrq.gov/psi overview.htm)... 

BOX 6.3 Examples of AHRQ patient safety indicators PSI Name Definition... 

Figure 6.2 Changes in rates of 9 AHRQ derived patient safety indicators (Hospital Episode Statistics 1996/7-2005/6, England).

Raleigh, V.S., Cooper, J., Bremner, S.A. and Scobie, S. (2008) Patient safety indicators for England from hospital administrative data case-control analysis and comparison with US data. British Medical Journal, 337(octl7 l), al702. 

Patient Safety Indicators as Tools for Proactive Safety Management and Safety Culture Improvement... 

Patient safety indicators have typically been rmderstood as measures that produce irrformation on the number of urrsafe outcomes in healthcare. The indicator data typically collected and followed in healthcare deal with irrfectiorts associated with healthcare, such as mirrary irrfectiorrs from catheters and a central lirre due to bloodstream infectiorrs (EUNetPas 2010). In the light of recent system safety theories, this use of indicators seems rrarrow since it reflects the idea of patient safety as a lack of adverse events. 

Examples of possible patient safety indicators derived from the criteria and the control functions are presented in Tables 9.3 and 9.4. 

Patient safety indicators have almost always been considered quantitative by nature (e.g. EUNetPas 2010 33 Kristensen et al. 2007 7). However, qualitative indicators can also provide important information on patient safety. For example, personnel s expressions of worry about patient safety issues in the organisation or quality audits that provide a written summary evaluation provide important information about patient safety - often more important than the quantitative indicators do. The problem of the quantification of, for example, adverse events and near misses is the loss of context, i.e. the loss of the story behind the incidents (Dekker 2011 Reiman and Rollenhagen 2011). Instead of data analysis it is merely a classification of data (Dekker 2011 143). Too often this classification is taken as a sufficient basis for managerial decisionmaking in situations that should require more in-depth analysis of the individual... 

Kristensen, A., Mainz, J. and Bartels, R 2007. Establishing a Set of Patient Safety Indicators. Safety Improvement for Patients in Europe. SlmPatlE - Work Package 4. Aarhus The ESQH-office for Quality Indicators. 

Patient safety indicators are a set of quality measures that makes use of hospital inpatient data to provide a perspective on patient safety. The indicators highlight difficulties that patients face through contact with the health care system and that are likely amenable to prevention by implementing appropriate changes at system level. The difficulties or problems highlighted are commonly known as adverse events or complications. 

Some of the patient safety indicators are presented below [26,27]. 

This patient safety indicator is concerned with anesthesia reactions and complications and is expressed by... 

---