Nature of patient reports from studies asking open-ended questions
| Category of PSI | No. of patient reports (% of sample)17 | No. of patient reports (% of sample)24 | No. of patient reports (% of sample)29 | Total no. of patient reports (% of total sample) |
| Diagnosis-related problems, for example, diagnosis error | 3 (4%) | 1 (5%) | – | 4 (3%) |
| Medication-related problems, for example, failure to order drug, wrong dose, wrong route, known allergy | 47 (65%) | 7 (39%) | 7 (17%) | 61 (46%) |
| Operative- or procedure-related problems, for example, postprocedure related problems | 4 (6%) | 4 (22%) | – | 8 (6%) |
| Problems with clinical services, for example, failure to draw blood, wrong patient, wrong body part, delays to tests or procedures | 7 (10%) | 3 (17%) | 1 (2%) | 11 (8%) |
| Service quality problems, for example, waits and delays, problems with care environment | 6 (8%) | 3 (17%) | 27 (64%) | 36 (27%) |
| Other problems, for example, failure to follow-up, equipment malfunctions | 5 (7%) | – | 7 (17%) | 12 (10%) |
| Total number of reports | 72* | 18 | 42† | 132 |
↵* Total exceeds number of classified PSIs detailed in table 1 (n=62) as multiple process problems were identified for a single PSI. Information relating to incident type was only provided for classified PSIs.
↵† Only a sample of 42 reports is available from the paper (rather than the total number of patient reported events n=121; see table 1) as these were highlighted as ‘the most serious incident reported by each of the 42 patients who identified an ‘unsafe episode’’ (Weingart et al, p 88).29