Factors Associated with Patient Safety Incidents in Long-Term Care Hospitals: A Secondary Data Analysis

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to determine the severity of patient safety incidents and its associated factors in Long-term Care Hospital (LTCH) settings. Methods: This study performed a cross-sectional analysis of secondary national data from the Korea Patient Safety Reporting and Learning System. A total of 5,316 LTCH datasets from 2018 to 2020 were analyzed using multi-nominal logistic regression with the help of the SPSS 26.0 program. Results: Adverse events were significantly associated with age, location of the incidents, night-duty hours, incident type, and small hospital size. Further, sentinel events were significantly associated with female gender, age, incident type (meal and suicide/self-harm), and small hospital size. Conclusion: The results underline the need for developing standardized patient safety guidelines that consider LTCH characteristics and holding periodic education programs for healthcare workers in LTCHs so that they can gain adequate knowledge and practical skills for ensuring patient safety. In addition, they highlight the need for measures to improve institutional support and processes so that any weaknesses can be resolved to optimize patient safety.