Involving patients, family, partners and/or carers in measuring and monitoring patient safety in hospitals: Protocol for an umbrella review

<ns3:p>Background While substantive efforts have been made to improve the safety of hospital care, these have largely targeted the healthcare professional. Such a focus ignores the patient’s ‘voice’, and the unique insights patients and their families have into healthcare system functioning. Despite international policy shifts toward empowering patients to support patient safety, there remains a lack of knowledge regarding the full range of existing approaches for facilitating patient involvement in measuring and monitoring patient safety (MMS) in the hospital. This umbrella review will aim to identify existing approaches to involving adult inpatients (or family/partners/carers communicating on their behalf ) in MMS in hospital settings, along with evidence supporting their use. Methods The current review will adhere to the Joanna Briggs Institute guidance for umbrella reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Overviews of Reviews (PRIOR) checklist. Systematic searches will be conducted across five electronic databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Academic Search Complete) to identify existing reviews that examine patient-involvement in MMS in hospital settings. Data will be extracted on the characteristics of approaches identified (e.g., surveys, interviews, incident reporting) along with any evidence of their feasibility, contextual appropriateness and psychometric properties. Methodological quality will be appraised using the CASP checklist, and certainty of evidence will be assessed via a hybrid GRADE and GRADE-CERQual approach. Conclusions This umbrella review will deliver a comprehensive profile of each different approach to involving patients, families and carers in MMS in hospital settings. By evaluating the psychometric evidence and practical feasibility (affordability, equity, and acceptability) of these approaches, the findings will support the ascertainment of best practice to involving patients in MMS in hospital settings, ultimately supporting an important shift in the framing of patients as passive recipients of care to active partners in safe and effective care delivery.</ns3:p>