How to organize incident management

Ensure a safety culture

A proactive safety culture contributes to more safety in the workplace. In a safety culture everyone is alert to possible risks. It is also an open atmosphere where everyone actively works on safely reporting incidents and which easily deals with unsafe situations in processes.

To create a safety culture it is important that employees are aware of unconscious behavior. The following interventions contribute to awareness:

• conducting audits;
• doing safety rounds;
• analyzing and discussing incidents with a team.

The so-called Safety Ladder can also be used to create awareness. Healthcare organizations can use this instrument to work on increasing employee safety awareness. By setting up, implementing and testing elements that contribute to safe work and safe behavior, the organization can introduce safe behavior into the culture.

The Safety Ladder can also contribute to assessing the safety culture within an organization. On top of that, it can show what needs to be done to climb the Safety Ladder, or how to improve the safety culture.

Internal communication about incidents

Good communication is the foundation of safe work. Many incidents are the result of miscommunication. How can we reduce the chance of miscommunication?

1. Input questions: when a (near) incident has taken place, all parties involved must be heard in order to come up with a proper assessment for follow-up action. By bundling the insights and experience of multiple colleagues, you get a good idea of the cause and possible areas of improvement.
2. Share overview of incidents: this method also requires a good reporting module, so that all employees in the organization have direct access to all the information about (near) incidents within a certain department. This way, the organization can share relevant information in a short period of time and also enable other departments to learn from previous mistakes their colleagues made.
3. Roll out improvement actions throughout the organization: the improvement actions of the departments in question can be adopted by other departments. This not only increases efficiency, but also immediately addresses safety in the workplace. This process would be much more complicated if incidents were kept in a file or on one of the managers’ computers.

(near) incidents as a basis for improvement plans

When managers distribute reports, they become aware of the risks within the organization. They are challenged to do things better/differently in their department by making more time, money, people or material available.

As a result of (near) incidents, management as well as employees can decide to do things differently by adjusting norms, standards or policies. However experience shows that improvement actions are in fact being signaled, but not structurally applied. This is a missed opportunity, because improvement is necessary to achieve strategic goals.

The TPSC Cloud^TM application Improve 2.0 is the digital improvement tracking system that registers improvement actions from the whole organization at a central location. It also prioritizes improvement actions, designates managers and monitors lead times. The application automates the improvement process and makes sure that your organization consistently adheres to the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.

PDCA cycle:

• Plan: establish activities and objectives and how you are going to measure these;
• Do: implement the plan and possibly experiment with a different approach;
• Check: check whether the set objectives have been met, evaluate the approach and learn from the new experience that has been gained;
• Act: adjust your approach based on the new knowledge, so that the set objectives will be met or met with less effort. The objectives may also be adjusted during this phase.

Setting up a digital incident management system

A digital incident management system makes it possible for companies to combine all activities related to incidents in one place. So that the organization knows which (near) incidents are taking place, is able to analyze these incidents, and use dashboards to inform the rest of the organization. This provides direct tools for tackling the risks in an integrated manner.

When reporting incidents digitally, you have a good overview of the basic causes of incidents and the types of incidents that occur. The nature and type of the report are automatically registered. By reporting as many (near) incidents as possible, you will set up a valuable database over time. You can use this database to identify trends, which provide input for in-depth incident analysis and subsequently contribute to improving safety.

>> Get 14 tips for developing the best incident reporting forms!

The automation of processes simultaneously increases effectiveness/productivity. With more attention to automation and safety, your internal processes and the quality of the end product will also improve. Reports on incidents and complaints provide insight into how the processes can be improved.

Some important functionalities of an incident management system are:

• option to register different types of incidents, on custom-made forms if necessary;
• forms can be used at any time or place, be it via the intranet or on-site using a tablet or cell phone;
• the option to ask colleagues for additional information or to add other information to the file afterward;
• option to use an incident and directly create an improvement action
• user management whereby more options are assigned to the user depending on his/her position;

• workflow management for the automation of the right follow-up steps, depending on the type of incident;
• using status updates and notifications to monitor the handling of reports;
• various methods to analyze incidents and cause both prospectively and retrospectively;
• management dashboards & reporting to gain insight into trends and inform the organization about this

Before purchasing a digital system, it is wise to determine where the need comes from and what you want to achieve with the software. Our patient safety specialists are happy to help. Use our contact form to get in contact