Patients with CKD are susceptible to experiencing harm related to the care they receive due to their impaired kidney function and the complexity of the medical treatments they undergo.

Some studies have assessed the harms that CKD patients experience when they're hospitalized, but most of the care they receive is delivered outside of the hospital. Jennifer Ginsberg, Jeffrey Fink, MD (University of Maryland School of Medicine), and their colleagues examined 267 CKD patients enrolled in the ongoing Safe Kidney Care study, which attempts to determine the frequency of complications of medical care pertinent to the outpatient treatment of patients with CKD. The researchers looked for patient-reported adverse safety incidents (class I), which are reported hazardous events or symptoms that study participants attribute to a medication, as well as actionable safety findings (class II), which are hazardous clinical disturbances detected at study evaluations that have the potential to be corrected with treatment or medication modification.