What's the definition of 'reportable'? : A qualitative study identifying influences on incident and safety risk reporting in NHS Trusts

Abstract

Patient safety reporting was introduced nationally as a patient safety improvement tool more than a decade ago (DOH, 2002), but there has been little evidence of impact in the interim (eg Shojiana, 2008). Studies of patient safety reporting commonly investigate an aspect of risk or incident reporting shown to be critical in other sectors in order to comment on relative performance in healthcare. Such studies have identified barriers to patient safety reporting including: lack of shared vision for reporting, a lack of management support, poor feedback, system design, user-friendliness, and level of information required. Identifying improvements required for safety reporting in healthcare based on its deficits compared to other sector successes has been criticised (eg comparing culture in healthcare with culture in aviation; Macrae, 2015). The aim of this study was to identify where improvements can be made to the process of patient safety and risk reporting, based on NHS staff descriptions of identification and reporting and their experience of where the challenges lie.