Patient safety and quality of care in developing countries in Southeast Asia: a systematic literature review.

Harrison R, Cohen AW, Walton M. Int J Qual Health Care. 2015;27:240-254.

The World Health Organization has set a goal to define global patient safety challenges. Researchers sought to define the frequency and types of patient safety issues, current improvement activities, and contextual considerations and challenges in developing countries in Southeast Asia. Review of 33 publications raised 4 general concerns: the risk of health care–associated infections, medication errors, the quality of maternal and perinatal care, and overall quality of health care delivery. This systematic review also demonstrated a lack of any countrywide or large-scale retrospective medical record review studies to define prevalence of safety incidents in these countries. This knowledge is important for developing a targetedpatient safety research agenda for these countries.