Print Email Facebook Twitter Mapping patient safety: A large-scale literature review using bibliometric visualisation techniques Title Mapping patient safety: A large-scale literature review using bibliometric visualisation techniques Author Rodrigues, S.P. Van Eck, N.J. Waltman, L. Jansen, F.W. Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering Department Biomechanical Engineering Date 2014-03-13 Abstract Background The amount of scientific literature available is often overwhelming, making it difficult for researchers to have a good overview of the literature and to see relations between different developments. Visualisation techniques based on bibliometric data are helpful in obtaining an overview of the literature on complex research topics, and have been applied here to the topic of patient safety (PS). Methods On the basis of title words and citation relations, publications in the period 2000–2010 related to PS were identified in the Scopus bibliographic database. A visualisation of the most frequently cited PS publications was produced based on direct and indirect citation relations between publications. Terms were extracted from titles and abstracts of the publications, and a visualisation of the most important terms was created. The main PS-related topics studied in the literature were identified using a technique for clustering publications and terms. Results A total of 8480 publications were identified, of which the 1462 most frequently cited ones were included in the visualisation. The publications were clustered into 19 clusters, which were grouped into three categories: (1) magnitude of PS problems (42% of all included publications); (2) PS risk factors (31%) and (3) implementation of solutions (19%). In the visualisation of PS-related terms, five clusters were identified: (1) medication; (2) measuring harm; (3) PS culture; (4) physician; (5) training, education and communication. Both analysis at publication and term level indicate an increasing focus on risk factors. Conclusions A bibliometric visualisation approach makes it possible to analyse large amounts of literature. This approach is very useful for improving one's understanding of a complex research topic such as PS and for suggesting new research directions or alternative research priorities. For PS research, the approach suggests that more research on implementing PS improvement initiatives might be needed. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:c4f20906-f0ce-405c-944e-7dfe8284669b DOI doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2013- 004468 Publisher BMJ Publishing Group ISSN 2044-6055 Source BMJ Open, 4 (3), 2014 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights (c) 2014 Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) Files PDF 304889.pdf 2.3 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:c4f20906-f0ce-405c-944e-7dfe8284669b/datastream/OBJ/view