Patient and caregiver perspectives on causes and prevention of ambulatory adverse events: multilingual qualitative study

Context: Ambulatory adverse events (AEs) affect up to 25% of the global population and cause over 7 million preventable hospital admissions around the world. Though patients and caregivers are key actors in promoting and monitoring their own ambulatory safety, healthcare teams do not traditionally partner with patients in safety efforts. We sought to identify what patients and caregivers contribute when engaged in ambulatory AE review, focusing on under-resourced care settings.

Methods: We recruited adult patients, caregivers and patient advisors who spoke English, Spanish and/or Cantonese, from primary care clinics affiliated with a public health network in the USA. All had experience taking or managing a high-risk medication (blood thinners, insulin or opioid). We presented two exemplar ambulatory AEs: one involving a warfarin drug-drug interaction, and one involving delayed diagnosis of colon cancer. We conducted semistructured focus groups and interviews to elicit participants' perceptions of causal factors and potential preventative measures for similar AEs. The study team conducted a mixed inductive-deductive qualitative analysis to derive major themes.

Findings: The sample included 6 English-speaking patients (2 in the focus group, 4 individual interviews), 6 Spanish-speaking patients (individual interviews), 4 Cantonese-speaking patients (2 in the focus group, 2 interviews), and 6 English-speaking patient advisors (focus group). Themes included: (1) Patients and teams have specific safety responsibilities; (2) Proactive communication drives safe ambulatory care; (3) Barriers related to limited resources contribute to ambulatory AEs. Patients and caregivers offered ideas for operational changes that could drive new safety projects.

Conclusions: An ethnically and linguistically diverse group of primary care patients and caregivers defined their agency in ensuring ambulatory safety and offered pragmatic ideas to prevent AEs they did not directly experience. Patients and caregivers in a safety net health system can feasibly participate in AE review to ensure that safety initiatives include their valuable perspectives.