Dataset for "Exploring the Role of Guidelines in Contributing to Medication Errors: A Descriptive Analysis of National Patient Safety Incident Data"

The National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS) collects data on national patient safety incident reports that are voluntarily and anonymously reported by staff working in the National Health Service (NHS) and other healthcare organisations in England and Wales. The reports include incidents and near misses. The report template allows the input of categorical data (e.g. incident type and location) as well as free text fields that allow staff to describe the incident, its perceived causes and the actions taken. Incidents within the database are classified by the reporter as having been linked to death, severe harm, moderate harm, low harm or no harm.

These data describe medication errors reported to the NRLS from 1st January 2016 to 31st December 2021, that might be associated with difficulties finding or understanding information in clinical guidelines. They includes details of the context of each incident (e.g. location, clinical speciality, drug involved) and additional coding of free-text variables (now redacted) showing whether the incident was related to difficulties finding or understanding information in clinical guidelines.

Keywords:
clinical guidelines, medication errors, patient safety, medication safety, medicines safety
Subjects:
Medical and health interface

Cite this dataset as:
Jones, M., Liu, S., Powell, F., Samsor, A., Ting Chao Ru, F., Veliotis, N., Wong, Y., Franklin, B., Garfield, S., 2024. Dataset for "Exploring the Role of Guidelines in Contributing to Medication Errors: A Descriptive Analysis of National Patient Safety Incident Data". Bath: University of Bath Research Data Archive. Available from: https://doi.org/10.15125/BATH-01307.

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Data

nrls_data_open.csv
application/csv (1MB)
Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0

Full dataset with names of rare drugs redacted to prevent identification of cases. Free-text variables are also redacted to prevent identification of the case, as required by data sharing agreement with NHS England.

The file nrls_data_confidential.csv is for confidential archive only, as it contains uncommon drug names that might lead to identification of the incident involved.

Creators

Matthew Jones
University of Bath

Freyja Powell
University of Bath

Asma Samsor
University of Bath

Felicity Ting Chao Ru
University of Bath

Nikolaos Veliotis
University of Bath

Yin Mei Wong
University of Bath

Contributors

University of Bath
Rights Holder

Coverage

Temporal coverage:

From 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2021

Geographical coverage:

England and Wales

Documentation

Data collection method:

To identify incident reports relating to guideline use, a free text field search was conducted by the national NRLS team using the following search terms related to medicines guidelines commonly used in England and Wales: BNF, British National Formulary, Guideline, NICE, SPC, SmPC, Summary of Product Characteristics, CKS, Clinical Knowledge Summary/ies, Medusa, Injectable Medicines Guide and IMG. The search was restricted to incidents reported to the NRLS between 1st January 2016 and 31st December 2021 (inclusive) that had been classified by the reporter as medication incidents. The identified incident reports, including both categorical and free-text data fields, were then supplied to the research team.

Data processing and preparation activities:

No changes before analysis. Free-text fields were redacted before publication, to prevent identification of incidents (as required by data sharing agreement with NHS England). Uncommon drug names were also redacted for similar reasons.

Technical details and requirements:

No unusual software required.

Additional information:

See attached README.txt file.

Documentation Files

README.txt
text/plain (10kB)
Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0

Description of the archived files and the data they contain.

Funders

Publication details

Publication date: 2 February 2024
by: University of Bath

Version: 1

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15125/BATH-01307

URL for this record: https://researchdata.bath.ac.uk/id/eprint/1307

Related papers and books

Jones, M. D., Liu, S., Powell, F., Samsor, A., Ting, F. C. R., Veliotis, N., Wong, Y. M., Franklin, B. D., and Garfield, S., 2024. Exploring the Role of Guidelines in Contributing to Medication Errors: A Descriptive Analysis of National Patient Safety Incident Data. Drug Safety, 47(4), 389-400. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40264-024-01396-7.

Contact information

Please contact the Research Data Service in the first instance for all matters concerning this item.

Contact person: Matthew Jones

Departments:

Faculty of Science
Life Sciences