Annual Evidence Update
on Patient Involvement in Patient Safety
National Library for
Health Patient and Public Involvement Specialist Library
This Annual Evidence Update
considers the issue of patient involvement in patient
safety, which can be defined as: the actions that patients
take to reduce the likelihood of medical errors and/or the
actions that patients take to mitigate the effects of
medical errors when they do occur.
The Annual Evidence Update looks at the ways in which
patients can help to improve patient safety, and also at the
willingness of patients to perform safety-related
behaviours.
The National Library for Health (NLH) is aimed at everyone
involved in the delivery or support of health and social
care in England. The NLH Specialist Libraries have been
developed to identify and meet the information needs of
particular communities of practice. They are web-based
collections containing clinical and non-clinical information
on the major health priority areas. Each NLH Specialist
Library identifies and provides access to quality assessed
information of relevance to the community that it serves. An
aspect of this involves the production of Annual Evidence
Updates, which aim to highlight the best current evidence
for selected healthcare topics. Annual Evidence Updates
consist of the good quality evidence from a search of
research evidence on a particular topic over a 12 month
period, plus user-friendly summaries written by relevant
experts, and links to guidelines, secondary research and
primary research, if applicable. All information included in
Annual Evidence Updates has been subject to rigorous
selection criteria.
