Ensuring the highest standards of patient safety requires well-structured, prompt and proactive incident reporting, analysis, feedback and auditing.
Ensuring the highest standards of patient safety requires well-structured, prompt and proactive incident reporting, analysis, feedback and auditing. Diaverum has tracked all patient safety incidents over ten years according to 4 incident types: patient related, staff-visitors, products, equipment. In this study we analysed all incidents during 2019 (total 92,923; 2.7 incidents/patient). Of these, there were 81 serious incidents at corporate level, for events ranging from cardiac arrest to blood vessel air bubble blockage, while at country level, 831 serious incidents ranged from those ascribed to equipment (water supply, power failure and flooding) to staff or visitor injuries. Medication/prescription errors and venous needle dislodgement were of particular concern. Incidents are deemed serious if they may be life-threatening, result in death, cause impaired body function or structure or are considered to be serious by medical experts. We conclude that there is room for improvement in staff compliance with our standard operating procedures, especially at country level, regarding events concerning medication and needle dislodgement.
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