Strength of safety measures introduced by medical practices to prevent a recurrence of patient safety incidents: an observational study.
Effective patient safety improvement efforts address safety threats at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels. This study characterizes safety measures described in incident reports from German outpatient care settings. Of the 243 preventative measures identified across 160 reports, 83% of preventative measures were classified by the research team as “weak,” meaning that they focus on influencing human behavior rather than on treating underlying problems (e.g., alerts, trainings, double checks).