Mixed Methods Analysis of Medical Error Event Reports: A Report from the ASIPS Collaborative
Abstract
The Applied Strategies for Improving Patient Safety (ASIPS) collaborative developed an ambulatory primary care patient safety reporting system through an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)-funded demonstration grant. Such systems can potentially inform the development of interventions to improve patient safety, but only if the data contained in incident reports can be transformed into usable information. This paper presents a mixed methods approach to analyzing narrative error event reports. Mixed methods studies integrate one or more qualitative and quantitative techniques for data collection and analysis. There are five attributes to consider in designing such studies: (1) the rationale for mixing methods, (2) the mixed data collection and analysis techniques to use, (3) the priority to give to quantitative versus qualitative aspects of the research, (4) whether to use a sequential or concurrent implementation plan for these techniques, and (5) the phase of the research process at which the integration or mixing of methods occurs. The authors summarize their methodology by their approach to these attributes. They also describe the nature of the data reported to ASIPS. They illustrate their approach using an analysis of diagnostic testing errors and describe why this error type is significant, how they selected reports for analysis, the results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses, and what they learned from them. Based on their experience, the authors present a protocol for applying a mixed methods approach to the study of patient safety reporting data to inform the development of interventions. Using mixed methods to study patient safety is an effective and efficient approach to data analysis that provides both information and motivation for developing and implementing patient safety improvements.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA434085
Entities
People
- Christine W. Duclos
- Daniel M. Harris
- David R. West
- Deborah S. Main
- Douglas H. Fernald
- Javan Quintela
- John M. Westfall
- Linda Marr
- Linda Niebauer
Organizations
- United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality