Development and evaluation of patient safety interventions: Perspectives of operational safety leaders and patient safety organizations (August 2024)

Summary

This US study in the Journal of Patient Safety aimed to understand how patient safety professionals from healthcare facilities and patient safety organisations develop patient safety interventions. It also looked at the resources used to support intervention development. The authors analysed semi-structured interviews conducted with patient safety professionals at nine healthcare facilities and nine patient safety organisations. Findings were organised in the following categories:

• patient safety solutions and interventions
• use of external databases
• evaluation of patient safety solutions.

The findings highlight that patient safety professionals often use similar methods and resources to develop and evaluate patient safety interventions. However, many of these efforts are not coordinated across healthcare organisations and there would be benefit from working collectively in a systematic fashion. Healthcare facilities and patient safety organisations face similar challenges and there are several opportunities for optimisation on a national level that may improve patient safety.