Patient Identification in the Prevention of Errors and Adverse Events: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Introduction: when we speak of patient safety, we mean the effort of doctors to evade as much as possible any damage that may be caused to patients when performing a treatment or therapy on them, which is an important part of the care field when working as health personnel. Patient identification plays a significant role in the sanitary sphere. It consists of several steps to guarantee patient safety that will help us amend misinterpretations and prevent medical errors and/or adverse events. Objectives: describe the scientific evidence on correct patient identification as a factor in reducing adverse events and medical errors. Methods: a systematic literature review was carried out in Scopus, Web of Science and Pubmed. Conclusions: the registration and/or double verification systems of patients or samples in hospital environments significantly decrease patient identification errors. Despite these findings, due to the small sample of studies we found, standardization is necessary for developing future meta-analyses or recommendations with a higher level of evidence. The importance of accurate patient identification in medical care is highlighted, and strategies to improve accuracy when identifying patients and thus reduce errors were presented.