Table 2.

Patient record review method and patient safety incident characteristics of the 15 studies assessing the use of patient chart review for detecting patient safety incidents in a primary care setting.

Method	Study	Quality score	Number of patient safety incidents per 100 records	Types of errors per 100 recordsa
Trigger tool	Sears et al. [32]	30	14.2	Medication error = 2.3
	DeWet et al. [24]	25	14.1	Medication/prescribing errors = 4.9 Diagnosis errors = 0.3	Communication errors= 0.8
	DeWet and Bowie [25]	24	12.8	Medication errors = 7.6
	Eggleton and Dovey [37]	22	26.5	Medication errors = 26.5
	McKay et al. [26]	22	15.4	Data not provided
	Bowie et al. [15]	10	UTD	UTD
Error definition	Gaal et al. [27]	19	21.1	Treatment errors = 3.1 Communication = 2.6 Diagnosis = 2.1
	Khoo et al. [35]	19	UTD	Documentation errors = 98 Medication errors = 53.2	Diagnostic errors = 3.6
	Khoo et al. [36]	19	UTD	Intervention group (pre-intervention) Diagnostic error: 4.1 Medication errors: 43.2	Control group (pre-intervention) Diagnostic error: 3.4 Medication errors: 39
				Intervention group (post-intervention) Diagnostic error: 2.5 Medication errors: 25.2	Control group (post-intervention) Diagnostic error: 0.9 Medication errors: 36.7
	Martijn et al. [28]	17	UTD	Data not provided
	Wetzels et al. [29]	14	Living patients: 7.3 Deceased patients: 14.8	Living patients Diagnosis errors: 0.7 Treatment errors: 2.7 Communication errors: 2.7	Deceased patients Diagnostic errors: 3.7 Communication errors: 7.4
Clinical judgement	Smits et al. [30]	21	2.4	Treatment errors = 1.3	Diagnostic errors = 0.5
	Wetzels et al. [31]	13	7.3	Therapeutic errors: 2.7 Communication errors: 2	Diagnostic errors: 0.7
PRR following patient report	Montserrat-Capella et al. [34]	22	UTD	UTD
	Solberg et al. [33]	18	2.3 (‘real clinician errors’)	UTD

Note: UTD: unable to determine.

^aThe most commonly identified types of Patient Safety Incidents are presented here. See Supplementary Material 2 for detail on other types of errors.