William Lea, Luke Budworth, Jane O'Hara, Charles Vincent, Rebecca Lawton
{"title":"Investigators are human too: outcome bias and perceptions of individual culpability in patient safety incident investigations.","authors":"William Lea, Luke Budworth, Jane O'Hara, Charles Vincent, Rebecca Lawton","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017926","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017926","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Healthcare patient safety investigations inappropriately focus on individual culpability and the target of recommendations is often on the behaviours of individuals, rather than addressing latent failures of the system. The aim of this study was to explore whether outcome bias might provide some explanation for this. Outcome bias occurs when the ultimate outcome of a past event is given excessive weight, in comparison to other information, when judging the preceding actions or decisions.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>We conducted a survey in which participants were each presented with three incident scenarios, followed by the findings of an investigation. The scenarios remained the same, but the patient outcome was manipulated. Participants were recruited via social media and we examined three groups (general public, healthcare staff and experts) and those with previous incident involvement. Participants were asked about staff responsibility, avoidability, importance of investigating and to select up to five recommendations to prevent recurrence. Summary statistics and multilevel modelling were used to examine the association between patient outcome and the above measures.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>212 participants completed the online survey. Worsening patient outcome was associated with increased judgements of staff responsibility for causing the incident as well as greater motivation to investigate. More participants selected punitive recommendations when patient outcome was worse. While avoidability did not appear to be associated with patient outcome, ratings were high suggesting participants always considered incidents to be highly avoidable. Those with patient safety expertise demonstrated these associations but to a lesser extent, when compared with other participants. We discuss important comparisons between the participant groups as well as those with previous incident involvement, as victim or staff member.</p><p><strong>Interpretation: </strong>Outcome bias has a significant impact on judgements following incidents and investigations and may contribute to the continued focus on individual culpability and individual focused recommendations observed following investigations.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143389910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Georgia B Black, Brian D Nicholson, Julie-Ann Moreland, Naomi J Fulop, Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Ruth Baxter
{"title":"Doing 'detective work' to find a cancer: how are non-specific symptom pathways for cancer investigation organised, and what are the implications for safety and quality of care? A multisite qualitative approach.","authors":"Georgia B Black, Brian D Nicholson, Julie-Ann Moreland, Naomi J Fulop, Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Ruth Baxter","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017749","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Over the past two decades, the UK has actively developed policies to enhance early cancer diagnosis, particularly for individuals with non-specific cancer symptoms. Non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways were piloted and then implemented in 2015 to address delays in referral and diagnosis. The aim of this study was to outline the functions that enable NSS teams to investigate cancer and other diagnoses for patients with NSSs.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>The analysis was derived from a multisite ethnographic study conducted between 2020 and 2023 across four major National Health Service (NHS) trusts. Data collection encompassed observations, patient shadowing, interviews with clinicians and patients (n=54) and gathered documents. We used principles of the functional resonance analysis method to identify the functions of the NSS pathway and analyse their relevance to patient safety.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our analysis produced 29 distinct functions within NSS pathways, organised into two clusters: pretesting assessment and information gathering, and post-testing interpretation and management. Safety-critical functions encompassed assessing the reason for referral, deciding on a plan of investigation and estimating the remaining cancer risk. We also identified ways that teams build and maintain safety across all functions, for example, by cultivating generalist-specialist expertise within the team and creating continuity through patient navigation. Variation in practice across sites revealed targets for an NSS pathway blueprint that would foster local development and quality improvement.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our findings suggest that national and local improvement plans could differentiate specific policies to reduce unwarranted variation and support adaptive variation that facilitates the delivery of safe care within the local context. Enhancing multidisciplinary teams with additional consultants and deploying patient navigators with clinical backgrounds could improve safety within NSS pathways. Future research should investigate different models of generalist-specialist team composition.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143063701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Large language models in healthcare information research: making progress in an emerging field.","authors":"Harish Tayyar Madabushi, Matthew D Jones","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017896","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017896","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"73-76"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142494911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rising above the strain? Adaptive strategies used by healthcare providers in intensive care units to promote safety.","authors":"Debbie Massey, Brigid M Gillespie","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017813","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017813","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"67-69"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142387874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Bat-Zion Hose, Jessica L Handley, Joshua Biro, Sahithi Reddy, Seth Krevat, Aaron Zachary Hettinger, Raj M Ratwani
{"title":"Development of a Preliminary Patient Safety Classification System for Generative AI.","authors":"Bat-Zion Hose, Jessica L Handley, Joshua Biro, Sahithi Reddy, Seth Krevat, Aaron Zachary Hettinger, Raj M Ratwani","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017918","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017918","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have the potential to revolutionise healthcare delivery but require classification and monitoring of patient safety risks. To address this need, we developed and evaluated a preliminary classification system for categorising generative AI patient safety errors. Our classification system is organised around two AI system stages (input and output) with specific error types by stage. We applied our classification system to two generative AI applications to assess its effectiveness in categorising safety issues: patient-facing conversational large language models (LLMs) and an ambient digital scribe (ADS) system for clinical documentation. In the LLM analysis, we identified 45 errors across 27 patient medical queries, with omission being the most common (42% of errors). Of the identified errors, 50% were categorised as low clinical significance, 25% as moderate clinical significance and 25% as high clinical significance. Similarly, in the ADS simulation, we identified 66 errors across 11 patient visits, with omission being the most common (83% of errors). Of the identified errors, 55% were categorised as low clinical significance and 45% were categorised as moderate clinical significance. These findings demonstrate the classification system's utility in categorising output errors from two different AI healthcare applications, providing a starting point for developing a robust process to better understand AI-enabled errors.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"130-132"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142926434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From insight to action: tackling underperformance in health professionals.","authors":"William Martinez","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017682","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017682","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"77-80"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142581277","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reducing the value/burden ratio: a key to high performance in value-based care.","authors":"Patrick Runnels, Peter J Pronovost","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017591","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-017591","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"133-136"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11874432/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142457767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tunçay Palteki, Saleh Salimi, Ahtisham Younas, Selahattin Taylan, Emre Aydın
{"title":"Understanding patient safety during earthquakes: a phenomenological study of disaster response.","authors":"Tunçay Palteki, Saleh Salimi, Ahtisham Younas, Selahattin Taylan, Emre Aydın","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2024-018115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2024-018115","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, pose a significant risk to both the public and healthcare professionals, jeopardising patient safety due to the disruption of healthcare systems and services. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of healthcare professionals concerning patient safety during natural hazards, specifically earthquakes.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Employing a descriptive phenomenological approach, the study followed the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research guidelines. 23 participants, including doctors, nurses and paramedics, were interviewed using purposive sampling. Data were gathered through semistructured interviews, which were audio recorded and transcribed. Ethical approval was obtained, and Colaizzi's method was used for data analysis, with findings validated through researcher consensus and participant feedback.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Nine overarching themes emerged, such as the emotional toll of communication breakdowns, struggles with patient identification, stress due to resource scarcity, operational chaos, ethical dilemmas and psychological impacts on both patients and staff. The study found that these factors collectively influenced patient safety during the earthquake.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The emotional strain caused by communication failures, patient identification issues and resource shortages compounded the challenges of providing safe care during the earthquake. Strengthening disaster preparedness through improved communication systems, resource management, psychological support, interagency coordination and regular realistic disaster drills is essential for safeguarding patient safety in future disasters.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143058042","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jane Jomy, Ke Xin Lin, Ryan S Huang, Alisia Chen, Aleena Malik, Michelle Hwang, Tahara D Bhate, Nazia Sharfuddin
{"title":"Closing the gap on healthcare quality for equity-deserving groups: a scoping review of equity-focused quality improvement interventions in medicine.","authors":"Jane Jomy, Ke Xin Lin, Ryan S Huang, Alisia Chen, Aleena Malik, Michelle Hwang, Tahara D Bhate, Nazia Sharfuddin","doi":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-017022","DOIUrl":"10.1136/bmjqs-2023-017022","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>Quality improvement (QI) efforts are critical to promoting health equity and mitigating disparities in healthcare outcomes. Equity-focused QI (EF-QI) interventions address the unique needs of equity-deserving groups and the root causes of disparities. This scoping review aims to identify themes from EF-QI interventions that improve the health of equity-deserving groups, to serve as a resource for researchers embarking on QI.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>In adherence with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis guidelines, several healthcare and medical databases were systematically searched from inception to December 2022. Primary studies that report results from EF-QI interventions in healthcare were included. Reviewers conducted screening and data extraction using Covidence. Inductive thematic analysis using NVivo identified key barriers to inform future EF-QI interventions.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Of 5,330 titles and abstracts screened, 36 articles were eligible for inclusion. They reported on EF-QI interventions across eight medical disciplines: primary care, obstetrics, psychiatry, paediatrics, oncology, cardiology, neurology and respirology. The most common focus was racialised communities (15/36; 42%). Barriers to EF-QI interventions included those at the provider level (training and supervision, time constraints) and institution level (funding and partnerships, infrastructure). The last theme critical to EF-QI interventions is sustainability. Only six (17%) interventions actively involved patient partners.</p><p><strong>Discussion: </strong>EF-QI interventions can be an effective tool for promoting health equity, but face numerous barriers to success. It is unclear whether the demonstrated barriers are intrinsic to the equity focus of the projects or can be generalised to all QI work. Researchers embarking on EF-QI work should engage patients, in addition to hospital and clinic leadership in the design process to secure funding and institutional support, improving sustainability. To the best of our knowledge, no review has synthesised the results of EF-QI interventions in healthcare. Further studies of EF-QI champions are required to better understand the barriers and how to overcome them.</p>","PeriodicalId":9077,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Quality & Safety","volume":" ","pages":"120-129"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2025-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141310027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}