Patient safety in primary care

The Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care commissioned a team from the Joanna Briggs Institute in March 2009 to conduct a review of the Australian and international literature regarding patient safety in primary care.

The purpose of the review was to “… summarise what is known about patient safety in primary care into a report that can be made public, and also inform future safety and quality work in primary care by the Commission.”
The literature review set out to address three questions identified by the Commission:

1.    What are the main patient safety risks relevant to primary care?
2.    What research has been conducted regarding solutions to these risks?
3.    What are the gaps in the evidence base about patient safety in primary care?

The found that key safety issues/hazards broadly related to care-process issues in domains such as prescribing, communication, policy and organisational change.

There was some evidence that event analysis, improving electronic documentation and support systems, strategies to improve communication between patients and healthcare professionals may represent solutions to minimise safety risk.  The main challenges that warrant solutions in primary care appear to be related to organisational change, prescribing, communication and diagnosis.

Drawing on the evidence and the literature, the report identified significant gaps in existing knowledge and that there are few patient safety solutions that have been robustly examined in primary care although a wide range have been proposed and discussed and there are numerous possible patient safety solutions that have not yet been examined.