Physician factors associated with medical errors in Norwegian primary care emergency services

Figures & data

Table 1. Assessments of medical errors in ten primary care emergency units in Norway, 2015–2017.

	Complaints	No-complaints
	Cases	Controls	Total
Variables	n (%)	n (%)	n (%)
Medical errors	41 (53.2)	7 (3.2)	48 (16.3)
No-errors	13 (16.9)	150 (69.1)	163 (55.4)
Inconclusive	23 (29.9)	60 (27.6)	83 (28.2)
	77	217	294

A case-control study of complaints was used as a point of departure.

Table 2. Assessments of medical errors in ten primary care emergency units in Norway, 2015–2017.

	Assessments of medical records
	Medical errors		No-errors		Inconclusive
Variables	n (%)	Mean (SD)	n (%)	Mean (SD)	n (%)	Mean (SD)	p-value
Gender
Female	14 (53.8)		8 (30.8)		4 (15.4)		0.027
Male	27 (52.9)		5 (9.8)		19 (37.3)
Seniority		8.7 (9.3)		4.3 (3.2)		8.4 (8.3)	0.242
Specialty general practice
Yes	11 (52.4)		4 (19.0)		6 (28.6)		0.951
No	30 (53.6)		9 (16.1)		17 (30.4)
Citizenship at authorization
Norwegian	28 (56.0)		7 (14.0)		15 (30.0)		0.636
Non-Norwegian	13 (48.1)		3 (22.2)		8 (29.6)
Workload^a							0.638^b
Only one duty	16 (57.1)		5 (17.9)		7 (25.0)
Low	9 (69.2)		1 (7.7)		3 (23.1)
Medium low	3 (30.0)		3 (30.0)		4 (40.0)
Medium high	3 (33.3)		2 (22.2)		4 (44.4)
High	10 (58.8)		2 (11.8)		5 (29.4)

A case-control study of complaints was used as a point of departure. Group of complaints.

^aFirst row the no. for just one duty in the fourteen day period. The following four rows has the quartiles of no. of patients/no. of duties: 1.0–6.6; 6.6–8.7; 8.7–12.0 and >12.0.

^bFischer’s exact test.

Table 3. Assessments of medical errors in ten primary care emergency units in Norway, 2015–2017.

	Assessments of medical records
	Medical errors		No-errors		Inconclusive
Variables	n (%)	Mean (SD)	n (%)	Mean (SD)	n (%)	Mean (SD)	p-value
Gender							0.472
Female	4 (4.7)		61 (70.9)		21 (24.4)
Male	3 (2.3)		89 (67.9)		39 (29.8)
							0.549
Seniority		6.3 (5.1)		9.1 (8.2)		11.1 (9.4)	0.192
Specialty general practice					0.065
Yes	3 (3.3)		56 (60.9)		33 (35.9)
No	4 (3.2)		94 (75.2)		27 (21.6)
Citizenship at authorization							0.277
Norwegian	4 (2.4)		112 (67.9)		49 (29.7)
Non-Norwegian	3 (5.8)		38 (73.1)		11 (21.2)
Workload^a							0.662^b
Only one duty	2 (4.8)		26 (61.9)		14 (33.3)
Low	1 (2.3)		32 (74.4)		10 (23.3)
Medium low	1 (2.1)		36 (76.6)		10 (21.3)
Medium high	1 (2.1)		34 (72.3)		12 (25.5)
High	2 (5.3)		22 (57.9)		14 (36.8)

A case-control study of complaints was used as a point of departure. Random sample group.

^aFirst row the no. for just one duty in the fourteen-day period. The following four rows has the quartiles of no. of patients/no. of duties: 1.0–6.6; 6.6–8.7; 8.7–12.0 and >12.0.

^bFischer’s exact test.

Data availability statement

The permission was granted provided de-identification or eradicating the study material within the end of 2018. De-identification of the study material was performed in due time. The datasets used during the current study are available de-identified from the corresponding author on reasonable request.