December 2015

Objective: To analyse patient safety in domiciliary dental care, with data from a quality registry. Design: Retrospective analysis. Clinical setting: Domiciliary dental care, private caregiver, Sweden, 2012-2014. Methods: All reported events in the quality registry at a provider of domiciliary dental care, (2012-05-01 to 2014-06-30) were categorized into 14 domains, and for severity as ‘minor’, ‘moderate’, or ‘serious’ events. The reported events were also independently assessed by an experienced reviewer for national requirements of reporting patient safety related events. Results: The quality registry covered 724 (0.03%) reported events during 218,586 consecutive treatment sessions in domiciliary dental care, including 628,070 registered dental procedures. Fifty (6.9%) of the reported events were patient safety related, of which 11 (1.5%) events were reportedly of minor severity, 20 (2.8%) as moderate, and 19 (2.6%) as serious. For all degrees of severity, the most frequently reported events were related to problems with patient identity control (3.3%). None of the events required reporting to national authorities. Conclusions: Domiciliary dental care has a low frequency of patient safety related events (0.03% of all treatments). Identity controls need to be emphasised in nursing homes or where individuals are dependent on the care of others. Key words: aged, dentistry, domiciliary care, geriatric dentistry, patient safety, nursing homes, Sweden