Introduction:

The occurrence of adverse events in health care has prompted the development of many prevention strategies. In the field of rehabilitation, particularly in physiotherapy, their report, analysis and effects have been described in a large number of articles.

Objective:

Determine the effects of the adverse events occurring in physiotherapy sessions, their order of appearance, causes and health determinants contributed to develop better prevention and patient safety strategies.

Methods:

A systematic search for scientific articles was conducted in six databases: PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, Pedro, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar, using the key terms “adverse effect”, “risk management” and “physiotherapy”. A total 1 145 articles were retrieved, from which 44 were selected for the study.

Conclusions:

More active participation should be achieved in physiotherapy-specific and multidisciplinary strategies fostering the safety of patients attending rehabilitation services, as well as in the continuing conduct of studies exploring other areas of physiotherapy and the incidence of adverse events therein.

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