Difference in prioritization of patient safety interventions between experts and patient safety managers in Japan

Abstract

Although a variety of patient safety interventions have been implemented, prioritizing them in a limited resource environment is important. The intervention priorities of patient safety managers may differ from those of patient safety experts. This study aimed to clarify the difference in prioritization of interventions between experts and safety managers to better identify interventions that should be promoted in Japan. We performed a secondary data analysis of two surveys: the Delphi survey for Japanese experts and a nationwide questionnaire survey for safety managers in hospitals. Regarding the 32 interventions constituting 14 organizational-level and 18 clinical-level interventions examined in the previous studies, we assessed three correlations to examine the difference in prioritization between experts and safety managers: correlations between experts and safety managers in the three perspectives (contribution, dissemination, and priority), those between priorities of experts and safety managers at the clinical and organizational level, and those among the three perspectives in experts and safety managers. Contribution (r = 0.768) and dissemination (r = 0.689) of patient safety interventions evaluated by experts and safety managers were positively correlated, but priorities were not. Interventions with priorities that differed between experts and safety managers were identified. In experts, there was no significant correlation between contribution and priority or between dissemination and priority. For safety managers, contributions (r = 0.812) and dissemination (r = 0.691) were positively correlated with priority. Our results suggest that patient safety managers evaluated future priority based on past contributions and current dissemination, whereas experts evaluated future priority based on other factors, such as expected impacts in the future, as mentioned in the previous study. In health policymaking, promotion of patient safety interventions that were given high priority by experts, but low priority by safety managers, should be considered with possible incentives.