Citation

Marra AR, Algwizani A, Alzunitan M, Brennan TMH, Edmond MB. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020; 17(1): e353.

Affiliation

Department of Internal Medicine, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph17010353

PMID

31947963

Abstract

Background: Adverse safety events in healthcare are of great concern, and despite an increasing focus on the prevention of error and harm mitigation, the epidemiology of safety events remains incomplete. Methods: We performed an analysis of all reported safety events in an academic medical center using a voluntary incident reporting surveillance system for patient safety. Safety events were classified as: serious (reached the patient and resulted in moderate to severe harm or death); precursor (reached the patient and resulted in minimal or no detectable harm); and near miss (did not reach the patient). Results: During a three-year period, there were 31,817 events reported. Most of the safety events were precursor safety events (reached the patient and resulted in minimal harm or no detectable harm), corresponding to 77.3%. Near misses accounted for 10.8%, and unsafe conditions for 11.8%. The number of reported serious safety events was low, accounting for only 0.1% of all safety events. Conclusions: The reports analysis of these events should lead to a better understanding of risks in patient care and ways to mitigate it.

Language: en

Keywords

epidemiology; patient safety; safety events