How Often Does Poor Communication Affect Patient Safety?

We know that poor communication in health care increases risk for patient safety incidents, but recent data on the subject are lacking. Researchers performed a systematic review of 46 studies published between 2013 and 2023 that involved 68,000 patients across North America, Europe, and Asia. Investigated patient safety incident types in these studies were adverse events (15 studies), near misses (5 studies), medication errors (5 studies), and undefined medical errors (4 studies); in 17 studies, the type of incident was not reported. Studies varied greatly in quality and risk for bias.

In 42 studies, researchers looked at whether communication problems (verbal, written, electronic, or nonverbal) between clinical staff, patients, and caregive…