ArticleQuality & safety in health care2003
Methodology and rationale for the measurement of harm with trigger tools.
Article in Quality & safety in health care, 2003. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Trigger tools in healthcare settings: insights from an umbrella review.BMJ open quality · 2025Pooled it
- Comparing rates of adverse events detected in incident reporting and the Global Trigger Tool: a systematic review.International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care · 2023Pooled it
- A meta-review of methods of measuring and monitoring safety in primary care.International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care · 2021Pooled it
- Preventable medication harm across health care settings: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2020Pooled it
- The Effect of Laboratory Test-Based Clinical Decision Support Tools on Medication Errors and Adverse Drug Events: A Laboratory Medicine Best Practices Systematic Review.The journal of applied laboratory medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Systematic review of patient safety interventions in dentistry.BMC oral health · 2015Pooled it
- Effect of Increased Inpatient Attending Physician Supervision on Medical Errors, Patient Safety, and Resident Education: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA internal medicine · 2018Trial
- Cost-effectiveness of ward-based pharmacy care in surgical patients: protocol of the SUREPILL (Surgery & Pharmacy In Liaison) study.BMC health services research · 2011Trial
- Mitigating risk in psychiatric hospital care for older adults by identifying adverse events with Global Trigger Tool for psychiatric patients.The International journal of risk & safety in medicine · 2026Article
- Drug-Event Pairs as Indicators for the Detection of Adverse Drug Reactions during Hospitalization in Routinely Collected Electronic Data Sources.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2025Article
- Broadening the definition of patient-safety events: lessons from a multicentre learning health system collaborative.BMJ open quality · 2025Article
- The application of Global Trigger Tool in monitoring antineoplastic adverse drug events: a retrospective study.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Article
- Trigger tool-based description of adverse events in helicopter emergency medical services in Qatar.BMJ open quality · 2023Article
- Paediatric harmful adverse drug events (PHADE).Paediatrics & child health · 2023Article
- Development of an Electronic Trigger to Identify Delayed Follow-up HbA1c Testing for Patients with Uncontrolled Diabetes.Journal of general internal medicine · 2022Article
- Chronic-pharma: New Platform for Chronic Patients Pharmacotherapy Optimization.Journal of medical systems · 2022Article
- Retrospective identification of medication related adverse events in the emergency medical services through the analysis of a patient safety register.Scientific reports · 2022Observational
- Article
- Impact of diagnostic errors on adverse outcomes: learning from emergency department revisits with repeat CT or MRI.Insights into imaging · 2021Article
- Utility of a trigger tool (TRIGGER-CHRON) to detect adverse events associated with high-alert medications in patients with multimorbidity.European journal of hospital pharmacy : science and practice · 2021Observational
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The growing recognition of harm as an unwelcome and frequently unrecognized byproduct of health care has initiated focused efforts to create highly reliable organizations for safe healthcare delivery. While debate continues over the exact magnitude of harm, there is a general acceptance of the need to improve our ability to deliver care in a safer manner. A major barrier to progress in safety has been the ability to effectively measure harm consistently and thus develop effective and targeted strategies to prevent its occurrence. This has resulted in a shift from initiatives focused exclusively on analysis of errors to those targeting events linked to harm. There is a growing recognition of a distinction between errors and adverse events as they often represent unique concepts fostering different strategies for improvement of safety. Conventional approaches to identifying and quantifying harm such as individual chart audits, incident reports, or voluntary administrative reporting have often been less successful in improving the detection of adverse events. As a result, a new method of measuring harm--the trigger tool--has been developed. It is easily customized and can be readily taught, enabling consistent and accurate measurement of harm. The history, application, and impact of the trigger tool concept in identifying and quantifying harm are discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.