title: How to monitor patient safety in primary care? Healthcare professionals' views.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To identify patient safety monitoring strategies in primary care.
  
  
  METHODS
  Open-ended questionnaire survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 113 healthcare professionals returned the survey from a group of 500 who were invited to participate achieving a response rate of 22.6%.
  
  
  METHODS
  North-West London, United Kingdom.
  
  
  METHODS
  A paper-based and equivalent online survey was developed and subjected to multiple stages of piloting. Respondents were asked to suggest strategies for monitoring patient safety in primary care. These monitoring suggestions were then subjected to a content frequency analysis which was conducted by two researchers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Respondent-derived monitoring strategies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In total, respondents offered 188 suggestions for monitoring patient safety in primary care. The content analysis revealed that these could be condensed into 24 different future monitoring strategies with varying levels of support. Most commonly, respondents supported the suggestion that patient safety can only be monitored effectively in primary care with greater levels of staffing or with additional resources.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Approximately one-third of all responses were recommendations for strategies which addressed monitoring of the individual in the clinical practice environment (e.g. GP, practice nurse) to improve safety. There was a clear need for more staff and resource set aside to allow and encourage safety monitoring. Respondents recommended the dissemination of specific information for monitoring patient safety such as distributing the lessons of significant event audits amongst GP practices to enable shared learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health and Social Care, Faculty of Health and Social Care, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Samra
authors.affiliation: Department of Primary Care and Public Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, W6 6RP; LKCMedicine, Imperial College London-Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Car
authors.affiliation: Department of Primary Care and Public Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, W6 6RP.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Majeed
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Medical Sciences Division, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UD.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vincent
authors.affiliation: Department of Primary Care and Public Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, W6 6RP.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Aylin
keywords: attitudes; patient safety; primary care physicians; questionnaire methods