Tetiana Lunova, Katherine-Helen Hurndall, Ulrik Bak Kirk, Bryony Dean Franklin, Ara Darzi, Ana Luisa Neves
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Objectives: With the growing adoption of virtual consultations in primary care, the need for tailored metrics to evaluate their safety became increasingly urgent. This systematic review seeks to identify and review existing safety measures that could be used for safety evaluation of virtual consultations in primary care.
Methods: This has been conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines and followed a published protocol. A systematic literature search was performed in Ovid MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library databases from 2014 to 2024. Studies comparing virtual consultations with face-to-face consultations in the primary care setting were included. An inductive thematic analysis was performed to systematically extract and group the safety measures into overarching themes, with a narrative synthesis to summarise the results.
Results: A total of 47 studies (31 experimental and 16 observational studies) were included (n=2 223 697 patients). All studies assessed the safety of virtual versus face-to-face consultations via one or both of the following domains: (1) factors that influence the safety of virtual consultations and (2) tangible outcomes of virtual care safety. The former were categorised into provider-related, patient-related and system-related factors. Tangible outcomes were evident through three subthemes-adverse events, health outcomes and patient perception of safety.
Conclusions: This review provides a systematic synthesis of measures for the safety evaluation of virtual consultations. Further research into patient and physician perspectives is needed to identify aspects and indicators not captured in this study, followed by a consensus study to finalise safety metrics. Ultimately, having a robust methodology for safety evaluation of virtual consultations in place will enable safety monitoring, root cause analyses and safety improvement.
期刊介绍：
BMJ Quality & Safety (previously Quality & Safety in Health Care) is an international peer review publication providing research, opinions, debates and reviews for academics, clinicians and healthcare managers focused on the quality and safety of health care and the science of improvement.
The journal receives approximately 1000 manuscripts a year and has an acceptance rate for original research of 12%. Time from submission to first decision averages 22 days and accepted articles are typically published online within 20 days. Its current impact factor is 3.281.
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