ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Family Medicine and Primary Care
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1584286
Development and Validation of a Medication Safety Self-Assessment Tool for Primary Healthcare Settings in China
Provisionally accepted
- China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China
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Background: Medication safety remains a global public health challenge, particularly in resourceconstrained primary care settings. This study aimed to develop and validate a specific, proactive, medication safety self-assessment tool tailored for primary healthcare settings in China. Methods: A mixed-methods approach combining literature review, field investigations, a Delphi expert consultation (3 rounds), and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was implemented. 43 voluntarily participating settings completed the self-assessment, with effectiveness validated through correlation analysis between assessment scores and adverse drug events (ADEs) indicators (medication errors, dispensing/prescribing errors). Results: We constructed a medication safety selfassessment tool for primary care settings comprising 5 domains, 18 core characteristics, and 84 selfassessment items. The mean percent score for 43 participating primary care settings was 81.5%± 11.7%, and Spearman's rank correlations were used to examine the relationship between the overall assessment scores to the incidence of ADEs (Correlation Coefficient is -0.448, P=0.003). Conclusion: As the first medication safety assessment tool for Chinese primary healthcare settings, based on current medication practices and validated through ADE, implementation demonstrates potential to enhance medication safety practices.
Keywords: Primary healthcare setting, medication safety, Risk Management, Self-Assessment, Delphi method, Analytic hierarchy process
Received: 14 Apr 2025; Accepted: 24 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shang, Qin, Guo, Li and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lei Zhang, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing, China
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