What is known about adverse events in older medical hospital inpatients? A systematic review of the literature.

Purpose: Large international studies have shown that older hospital inpatients are at particular risk of adverse events. The purpose of this review was to synthesize data from studies designed to assess the scale and nature of this harm, with the ultimate aim of informing the development of new safety and quality measurement tools to facilitate improved hospital care for these vulnerable patients.

Data Sources Study Selection: and data extraction A systematic search using Ovid SP and other sources was carried out, rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied and quality assessment of included studies was conducted.