A comparative assessment of two tools designed to support patient safety culture in UK general practice.

BACKGROUND: The NHS has recognised the importance of a high quality patient safety culture in the delivery of primary health care in the rapidly evolving environment of general practice. Two tools, PC-SafeQuest and MapSaf, were developed with the intention of assessing and improving patient safety culture in this setting. Both have been made widely available through their inclusion in the Royal College of General Practitioners' Patient Safety Toolkit and our work offerss a timely exploration of the tools to inform practice staff as to how each might be usefully applied and in which circumstances. Here we present a comparative analysis of their content, and describe the perspectives of staff on their design, outputs and the feasibility of their sustained use. METHODS: We have used a content analysis to provide the context for the qualitative study of staff experiences of using the tools at a representative range of practices recruited from across the Midlands (UK). Data was collected through moderated focus groups using an identical topic guide. RESULTS: A total of nine practices used the PC-SafeQuest tool and four the MapSaf tool. A total of 159 staff completed the PC-SafeQuest tool 52 of whom took part in the subsequent focus group discussions, and 25 staff completed the MapSaf tool all of whom contributed to the focus group discussions. PC-SafeQuest was perceived as quick and easy to use with direct questions pertinent to the work of GP practices providing useful quantitative insight into important areas of safety culture. Though MaPSaF was more logistically challenging, it created a forum for synchronous cross- practice discussions raising awareness of perceptions of safety culture across the practice team. CONCLUSIONS: Both tools were able to promote reflective and reflexive practice either in individual staff members or across the broader practice team and the oversight they granted provided useful direction for senior staff looking to improve patient safety. Because PC SafeQuest can be easily disseminated and independently completed it is logistically suited to larger practice organisations, whereas the MapSaf tool lends itself to smaller practices where assembling staff in a single workshop is more readily achieved.

Development of the prototype concise safe systems checklist tool for general practice.

BACKGROUND: In the course of producing a patient safety toolkit for primary care, we identified the need for a concise safe-systems checklist designed to address areas of patient safety which are under-represented in mandatory requirements and existing tools. This paper describes the development of a prototype checklist designed to be used in busy general practice environments to provide an overview of key patient safety related processes and prompt practice wide-discussion. METHODS: An extensive narrative review and a survey of world-wide general practice organisations were used to identify existing primary care patient safety issues and tools. A RAND panel of international experts rated the results, summarising the findings for importance and relevance. The checklist was created to include areas that are not part of established patient safety tools or mandatory and legal requirements. Four main themes were identified: information flow, practice safety information, prescribing, and use of IT systems from which a 13 item checklist was trialled in 16 practices resulting in a nine item prototype checklist, which was tested in eight practices. Qualitative data on the utility and usability of the prototype was collected through a series of semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: In testing the prototype four of nine items on the checklist were achieved by all eight practices. Three items were achieved by seven of eight practices and two items by six of eight practices. Participants welcomed the brevity and ease of use of the prototype, that it might be used within time scales at their discretion and its ability to engage a range of practice staff in relevant discussions on the safety of existing processes. The items relating to prescribing safety were considered particularly useful. CONCLUSIONS: As a result of this work the concise patient safety checklist tool, specifically designed for general practice, has now been made available as part of an online Patient Safety Toolkit hosted by the Royal College of General Practitioners. Senior practice staff such as practice managers and GP partners should find it a useful tool to understand the safety of less explored yet important safety processes within the practice.

Mindful organizing in patients' contributions to primary care medication safety.

BACKGROUND: There is a need to ensure that the risks associated with medication usage in primary health care are controlled. To maintain an understanding of the risks, health-care organizations may engage in a process known as "mindful organizing." While this is typically conceived of as involving organizational members, it may in the health-care context also include patients. Our study aimed to examine ways in which patients might contribute to mindful organizing with respect to primary care medication safety. METHOD: Qualitative focus groups and interviews were carried out with 126 members of the public in North West England and the East Midlands. Participants were taking medicines for a long-term health condition, were taking several medicines, had previously encountered problems with their medication or were caring for another person in any of these categories. Participants described their experiences of dealing with medication-related concerns. The transcripts were analysed using a thematic method. RESULTS: We identified 4 themes to explain patient behaviour associated with mindful organizing: knowledge about clinical or system issues; artefacts that facilitate control of medication risks; communication with health-care professionals; and the relationship between patients and the health-care system (in particular, mutual trust). CONCLUSIONS: Mindful organizing is potentially useful for framing patient involvement in safety, although there are some conceptual and practical issues to be addressed before it can be fully exploited in this setting. We have identified factors that influence (and are strengthened by) patients' engagement in mindful organizing, and as such would be a useful focus of efforts to support patient involvement.

Influences on the adoption of patient safety innovation in primary care: a qualitative exploration of staff perspectives.

BACKGROUND: Primary care is changing rapidly to meet the needs of an ageing and chronically ill population. New ways of working are called for yet the introduction of innovative service interventions is complicated by organisational challenges arising from its scale and diversity and the growing complexity of patients and their care. One such intervention is the multi-strand, single platform, Patient Safety Toolkit developed to help practices provide safer care in this dynamic and pressured environment where the likelihood of adverse incidents is increasing. Here we describe the attitudes of staff toward these tools and how their implementation was shaped by a number of contextual factors specific to each practice. METHODS: The Patient Safety Toolkit comprised six tools; a system of rapid note review, an online staff survey, a patient safety questionnaire, prescribing safety indicators, a medicines reconciliation tool, and a safe systems checklist. We implemented these tools at practices across the Midlands, the North West, and the South Coast of England and conducted semi-structured interviews to determine staff perspectives on their effectiveness and applicability. RESULTS: The Toolkit was used in 46 practices and a total of 39 follow-up interviews were conducted. Three key influences emerged on the implementation of the Toolkit these related to their ease of use and the novelty of the information they provide; whether their implementation required additional staff training or practice resource; and finally factors specific to the practice's local environment such as overlapping initiatives orchestrated by their CCG. CONCLUSIONS: The concept of a balanced toolkit to address a range of safety issues proved popular. A number of barriers and facilitators emerged in particular those tools that provided relevant information with a minimum impact on practice resource were favoured. Individual practice circumstances also played a role. Practices with IT aware staff were at an advantage and those previously utilising patient safety initiatives were less likely to adopt additional tools with overlapping outputs. By acknowledging these influences we can better interpret reaction to and adoption of individual elements of the toolkit and optimise future implementation.

The frequency and nature of prescribing problems by GPs-in-training (REVISiT): a retrospective review.

BACKGROUND: Prescribing errors can cause significant morbidity and occur in about 5% of prescriptions in English general practices. AIM: To describe the frequency and nature of prescribing problems in a cohort of GPs-in-training to determine whether they need additional prescribing support. DESIGN & SETTING: A primary care pharmacist undertook a retrospective review of prescriptions issued between 9 October 2014 and 11 March 2015 by 10 GPs in their final year of training from 10 practices in England. METHOD: Pre-existing standards and expert panel discussion were used to classify the appropriateness of prescribing. Data were imported into Stata (version 13) to perform descriptive analysis. An individualised report highlighting prescribing errors, suboptimal prescribing, and areas of good practice identified during the review was shared with the GPs-in-training and their trainers. This report was used to guide discussions during the GP-in-training's feedback session. RESULTS: A total of 1028 prescription items were reviewed from 643 consultations performed by 10 GPs-in-training. There were 92 prescribing errors (8.9%) and 360 episodes of suboptimal prescribing (35.0%). The most common types of error concerned medication dosages (n = 30, 32.6% of errors). CONCLUSION: Personalised review of prescribing revealed an error rate higher than recorded in a previous similar study mainly comprising GPs who had completed postgraduate training, and a substantially higher rate of suboptimal prescribing. A larger intervention study is now required to evaluate the effectiveness of receiving a personalised review of prescribing, and to assess its impact on patient safety.

A Patient Safety Toolkit for Family Practices.

OBJECTIVE: Major gaps remain in our understanding of primary care patient safety. We describe a toolkit for measuring patient safety in family practices. METHODS: Six tools were used in 46 practices. These tools were as follows: National Health Service Education for Scotland Trigger Tool, National Health Service Education for Scotland Medicines Reconciliation Tool, Primary Care Safequest, Prescribing Safety Indicators, Patient Reported Experiences and Outcomes of Safety in Primary Care, and Concise Safe Systems Checklist. RESULTS: Primary Care Safequest showed that most practices had a well-developed safety climate. However, the trigger tool revealed that a quarter of events identified were associated with moderate or substantial harm, with a third originating in primary care and avoidable. Although medicines reconciliation was undertaken within 2 days in more than 70% of cases, necessary discussions with a patient/carer did not always occur. The prescribing safety indicators identified 1435 instances of potentially hazardous prescribing or lack of recommended monitoring (from 92,649 patients). The Concise Safe Systems Checklist found that 25% of staff thought that their practice provided inadequate follow-up for vulnerable patients discharged from hospital and inadequate monitoring of noncollection of prescriptions. Most patients had a positive perception of the safety of their practice although 45% identified at least one safety problem in the past year. CONCLUSIONS: Patient safety is complex and multidimensional. The Patient Safety Toolkit is easy to use and hosted on a single platform with a collection of tools generating practical and actionable information. It enables family practices to identify safety deficits that they can review and change procedures to improve their patient safety across a key sets of patient safety issues.

Patients' evaluations of patient safety in English general practices: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Description of safety problems and harm in general practices has previously relied on information from health professionals, with scarce attention paid to experiences of patients. AIM: To examine patient-reported experiences and outcomes of patient safety in primary care. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-sectional study in 45 general practices across five regions in the north, centre, and south of England. METHOD: A version of the Patient Reported Experiences and Outcomes of Safety in Primary Care (PREOS-PC) questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 6736 patients. Main outcome measures included 'practice activation' (what a practice does to create a safe environment); 'patient activation' (how proactive are patients in ensuring safe healthcare delivery); 'experiences of safety events' (safety errors); 'outcomes of safety' (harm); and 'overall perception of safety' (how safe patients rate their practice). RESULTS: Questionnaires were returned by 1244 patients (18.4%). Scores were high for 'practice activation' (mean [standard error] = 80.4 out of 100 [2.0]) and low for 'patient activation' (26.3 out of 100 [2.6]). Of the patients, 45% reported experiencing at least one safety problem in the previous 12 months, mostly related to appointments (33%), diagnosis (17%), patient provider communication (15%), and coordination between providers (14%). Twenty-three per cent of the responders reported some degree of harm in the previous 12 months. The overall assessment of level of safety of practices was generally high (86.0 out of 100 [16.8]). CONCLUSION: Priority areas for patient safety improvement in general practices in England include appointments, diagnosis, communication, coordination, and patient activation.

Safety climate in English general practices: workload pressures may compromise safety.

OBJECTIVES: Although most health care interactions in the developed world occur in general practice, most of the literature on patient safety has focused on secondary care services. To address this issue, we have constructed a patient safety toolkit for English general practices. We report how practice and respondent characteristics affect scores on our safety climate measure, the PC-Safequest, and address recent concerns with high levels of workload in English general practices. METHODS: We administered the PC-Safequest, a 30-item tool that was designed to measure safety climate in primary care practices, to 335 primary care staff members in 31 practices in England. Practice characteristics, such as list size and deprivation in the area the practice served, and respondent characteristics, such as whether the respondent was a manager, were also collected and used in a multilevel analysis to predict PC-Safequest scores. RESULTS: Managers gave their practices significantly higher safety climate scores than did non-managers. Respondents with more years of experience had a more negative perception of the level of workload in their practice. Practices with more registered patients and in areas of higher deprivation provided lower safety climate scores. CONCLUSIONS: Managers rated their practices more positively on our safety climate measure, so the differences between the perceptions of managers and other staff may need to be reduced in order to build a strong safety culture. Excessive workload for more experienced staff and lower safety climate scores for larger practices may reflect 'burnout'. Concerns that pressures in primary care could affect patient safety are discussed.

Implementation and adoption of nationwide electronic health records in secondary care in England: final qualitative results from prospective national evaluation in "early adopter" hospitals.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the implementation and adoption of the NHS detailed care records service in "early adopter" hospitals in England. DESIGN: Theoretically informed, longitudinal qualitative evaluation based on case studies. SETTING: 12 "early adopter" NHS acute hospitals and specialist care settings studied over two and a half years. DATA SOURCES: Data were collected through in depth interviews, observations, and relevant documents relating directly to case study sites and to wider national developments that were perceived to impact on the implementation strategy. Data were thematically analysed, initially within and then across cases. The dataset consisted of 431 semistructured interviews with key stakeholders, including hospital staff, developers, and governmental stakeholders; 590 hours of observations of strategic meetings and use of the software in context; 334 sets of notes from observations, researchers' field notes, and notes from national conferences; 809 NHS documents; and 58 regional and national documents. RESULTS: Implementation has proceeded more slowly, with a narrower scope and substantially less clinical functionality than was originally planned. The national strategy had considerable local consequences (summarised under five key themes), and wider national developments impacted heavily on implementation and adoption. More specifically, delays related to unrealistic expectations about the capabilities of systems; the time needed to build, configure, and customise the software; the work needed to ensure that systems were supporting provision of care; and the needs of end users for training and support. Other factors hampering progress included the changing milieu of NHS policy and priorities; repeatedly renegotiated national contracts; different stages of development of diverse NHS care records service systems; and a complex communication process between different stakeholders, along with contractual arrangements that largely excluded NHS providers. There was early evidence that deploying systems resulted in important learning within and between organisations and the development of relevant competencies within NHS hospitals. CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of the NHS Care Records Service in "early adopter" sites proved time consuming and challenging, with as yet limited discernible benefits for clinicians and no clear advantages for patients. Although our results might not be directly transferable to later adopting sites because the functionalities we evaluated were new and untried in the English context, they shed light on the processes involved in implementing major new systems. The move to increased local decision making that we advocated based on our interim analysis has been pursued and welcomed by the NHS, but it is important that policymakers do not lose sight of the overall goal of an integrated interoperable solution.

Implementation and adoption of nationwide electronic health records in secondary care in England: qualitative analysis of interim results from a prospective national evaluation.

OBJECTIVES: To describe and evaluate the implementation and adoption of detailed electronic health records in secondary care in England and thereby provide early feedback for the ongoing local and national rollout of the NHS Care Records Service. DESIGN: A mixed methods, longitudinal, multisite, socio-technical case study. SETTING: Five NHS acute hospital and mental health trusts that have been the focus of early implementation efforts and at which interim data collection and analysis are complete. Data sources and analysis Dataset for the evaluation consists of semi-structured interviews, documents and field notes, observations, and quantitative data. Qualitative data were analysed thematically with a socio-technical coding matrix, combined with additional themes that emerged from the data. Main results Hospital electronic health record applications are being developed and implemented far more slowly than was originally envisioned; the top-down, standardised approach has needed to evolve to admit more variation and greater local choice, which hospital trusts want in order to support local activity. Despite considerable delays and frustrations, support for electronic health records remains strong, including from NHS clinicians. Political and financial factors are now perceived to threaten nationwide implementation of electronic health records. Interviewees identified a range of consequences of long term, centrally negotiated contracts to deliver the NHS Care Records Service in secondary care, particularly as NHS trusts themselves are not party to these contracts. These include convoluted communication channels between different stakeholders, unrealistic deployment timelines, delays, and applications that could not quickly respond to changing national and local NHS priorities. Our data suggest support for a "middle-out" approach to implementing hospital electronic health records, combining government direction with increased local autonomy, and for restricting detailed electronic health record sharing to local health communities. CONCLUSIONS: Experiences from the early implementation sites, which have received considerable attention, financial investment and support, indicate that delivering improved healthcare through nationwide electronic health records will be a long, complex, and iterative process requiring flexibility and local adaptability both with respect to the systems and the implementation strategy. The more tailored, responsive approach that is emerging is becoming better aligned with NHS organisations' perceived needs and is, if pursued, likely to deliver clinically useful electronic health record systems.