Patient safety research in China: a literature review

Abstract

Objective: A number of articles on patient safety have been published in Chinese-language journals in last decade. However, until now there have been no studies of their overall quality or contribution to current thinking. This study explored the themes and designs of studies on patient safety published in Chinese-language journals.

Method: We searched the major Chinese databases, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) and Chinese Journals Full-text Database (CNKI), for Chinese-language patient safety research papers published between January 2001 and December 2010. We analyzed the articles' publication years, research themes, author affiliations, and research methodologies. Quality and statistical methods were only appraised based on study design type.

Results: In the decade studied, a total of 6,336 articles were included. 2008 saw the greatest number of patient safety articles published in China (865). There were 11 journals which each published at least 55 relevant articles over 10 years. The most popular topic of patient safety studies was nosocomial infection (5,182/81.79%). Non-comparative studies accounted for the majority of the literature (4,390/ 69.3%); of these, most were case series (4,080/92.94%). Comparative studies accounted for only 2.6% of the studies found (167). Most of the first authors of included articles worked at hospitals (5,193), many in nursing departments (2,044).

Conclusions: There was no change trend in the number of articles on patient safety research published in Chinese in the past 10 years. Most articles described non-comparative studies, which lack rigorous designs. More methodologically rigorous designs are needed to improve the overall quality of patient safety research in China.