Table 1

Clusters of publications

			Number of publications
Cluster		Description	Total	2000–2005	2006–2010	Per cent of total		Ratio
0	Publications not assigned to a cluster		693	–	–	–	–	–
1	Quality improvement	Patient safety on an organisational/national level. Including studies concerning implementation of large quality improvement projects	608	301	307	9.9	6.5	0.7
2	Quality improvement	Patient safety on an organisational/national level. Including studies concerning implementation of large quality improvement projects	564	203	361	6.7	7.6	1.1
3	Incidence of adverse events	Incident reporting and incident prevention. Including articles following the IOM report “to err is human”	844	419	425	13.7	9.0	0.7
4	Medication error	Incidence of medication and dosing errors; computerised prescription and smart infusion pumps	915	340	575	11.1	12.1	1.1
5	Training, simulation and communication	Human factors engineering and crew resource management	913	241	672	7.9	14.2	1.8
6	Adverse drug events	Incidence of adverse drug events and drug complications	735	225	510	7.4	10.8	1.5
7	IT support systems	The role of IT support systems in error prevention	328	155	173	5.1	3.7	0.7
8	Culture	Patient safety culture and organisational climate	410	165	245	5.4	5.2	1.0
9	Infection control	Infection control and prevention	522	153	369	5.0	7.8	1.6
10	Medical errors and liability	Medical errors and liability; ethics and disclosure	283	127	156	4.2	3.3	0.8
11	Fatigue and workhours	The influence of fatigue; work hours and burn out on patient safety	224	79	145	2.6	3.1	1.2
12	Guidelines (implementation)	Development and implementation of guidelines to improve patient safety. Including NICE guidelines	200	103	97	3.4	2.0	0.6
13	Shared treatment decision-making	Including patient preference studies and doctor patient communication	230	132	98	4.3	2.1	0.5
14	Diagnostic errors	Diagnostic errors and clinical decision-making	152	59	93	1.9	2.0	1.0
15	Nursing	Including nurse staffing; job satisfaction; experience and education	230	104	126	3.4	2.7	0.8
16	Laboratory medicine	Including errors and adverse events in transfusion medicine; pathology and clinical laboratory medicine	181	67	114	2.2	2.4	1.1
17	Quantity and quality	Volume as a marker for quality and patient safety in high-volume hospitals	180	74	106	2.4	2.2	0.9
18	Anaesthesia	Patient safety and anaesthesia-related topics	131	69	62	2.3	1.3	0.6
19	Medical emergency teams	Including criteria for alerting medical emergency teams, early warning, identifying the critically ill patient end evaluation of medical emergency teams	137	35	102	1.1	2.2	1.9
	Total		8480	3051	4736	100	100	1.0

The ratio of the publication rates for each cluster in the periods 2006–2010 and 2000–2005 is reported in the rightmost column. A ratio above one indicates a relative increase in publications, while a ratio below one indicates a relative decrease in publications.
IOM, Institute of Medicine; NICE, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.