Medical negligence in healthcare organizations and its impact on patient safety and public health: a bibliometric study

Abstract

Background: Medical negligence is an increasing public health concern among healthcare providers worldwide as it affects patient safety. It poses a significant risk of patient injury, disease, disability, or death. The WHO has recognized deficiencies in patient safety as a global healthcare issue to be addressed. This study aimed to analyze various components of medical negligence research literature. Methods: Bibliographic data visualizations tools like Biblioshiny (RStudio) and VOSviewer were used besides MS Excel to examine the types of documents, annual scientific production, top contributing authors and their impact, authorship patterns and collaboration, top contributing countries and organizations, most significant sources of publication, most cited documents, and most frequently used keywords. Bibliometric methods were used to analyze the bibliographic records of research output on medical negligence downloaded from the Web of Science Core Collection. Results: The annual productivity of medical negligence research was increasing gradually. The most productive period for medical negligence research was 2011-2020. Bird contributed the highest number of publications to medical negligence literature while Brennan emerged as the highly cited author. Single-authored publications on medical negligence were not highly cited. The United States was the highest contributing country and the University of South Florida was the highest contributing organization while Harvard University was a highly cited organization. Nine out of the top ten contributing organizations were academic institutions and most of them belonged to the United States. The most important sources of publication on this topic were The Lancet and British Medical Journal. Localio et al. was the most important research article on medical negligence research. Conclusion: Due to increasing attention on this topic, there was a sharp increase in the research output on medical negligence. This is of significance as the WHO set in motion a patient safety program almost two decades ago.

Perceptions and Practices of Saudi Hospital Pharmacists Towards Reporting Medication Errors Including Near Misses

“…Medical negligence is a public health problem that impacts patients globally [ 25 ]. MEs are a subset of medical negligence that has an impact on patients globally [ 4 ].…”

Entrepreneurial leadership and global management of COVID-19: A bibliometric study

“…The literature review was documented in tables including topic and findings of the papers. According to Dahlawi et al (2021), a literature review should, at minimum, have a sample of ten papers before conducting analysis using those papers.…”

Conflict Management in Healthcare Leadership; A Narrative Review

“…Additionally, unresolved conflicts between healthcare professionals also hinder whistle-blowing activities, which at times, leads to the uninterrupted administration of ineffective treatments or medical malpractices. Unnoticed medical negligence in such scenarios profoundly impacts the patient care paradigm and increases the risk of patients to debilitating complications [25]. The overall outcomes of conflicts in healthcare settings include the interruption of patient-centered care, reduction in the safety and effectiveness of treatments, delay in treatment administration, and minimization of equity in patient management procedures [23].…”