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Patient Safety Newsletter
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Incident management stands for registering (near) incidents, analyzing which incidents exist within the organization and identifying the causes. Based on these causes, it is necessary to implement improvements together with the healthcare professionals. This is how incident management contributes to better quality and increased patient safety.
But how do you ensure a successful implementation of incident management? The Patient Safety Company has been assisting organizations around the world to improve their safety and quality for over 15 years now with incident management software. A flexible solution to register and analyze (near) incidents, up to the automation of improvement plans.
Next, we will discuss the main points concerning the organization of incident management:
At the workplace it is acceptable that sometimes "things don't go quite right". It is not seen as a mistake let alone reported; rather an extra administrative process perceived as being difficult and unnecessary. The error has since been corrected. Why still report it? However, in order to learn from incidents it is important that all incidents are reported.
Standard forms for reporting incidents, requesting all information required to analyze the incident, make an important contribution to an unambiguous manner of registration. It prevents errors, and it allows for a clear registration. With the TPSC software you have your own online forms: a fast way to record an incident, for example on-site via a cell phone. You can also add photos of the situation to the digital report form.
We know from calamity studies that these are often caused by a series of events, also known as (near) incidents. When organizations do not look at the (near) incidents, opportunities for improvement remain unused, because they provide a lot of information about the weak links in a process.
Prompt (near) incident reporting is important, so that everyone involved is still aware of its occurrence. Sometimes a report contains limited information. In order to analyze the incident, it is still necessary to speak to the employee and those directly involved to collect relevant information so that the basic causes can be identified.
There are various methods to systematically analyze incidents. These can be divided in the system approach and the person approach.
Another way of looking at incidents is prospective versus retrospective.
PRISMA has its origins in the chemical process industry and nowadays is also being used in healthcare. The PRISMA analysis examines human, technical and organizational failure factors.
By centrally registering all the (near) incidents, you will ultimately have enough data to discover trends, such as which type of incidents are more common. This is interesting management information, to be used when deciding which improvements to prioritize.
Read more about the options for analyzing incidents with our software and its translation into management reports.
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:
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.
Good communication is the foundation of safe work. Many incidents are the result of miscommunication. How can we reduce the chance of miscommunication?
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 CloudTM 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:
“In order to learn from incidents, it is important that all incidents and near incidents are reported. This blog describes the benefits of digital incident reporting”.
“This blog describes what actions can be taken to better support healthcare professionals who have been involved in a medical incident."
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:
The registration of an incidentBefore 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
Overview ready-made applications:
We have various ready-made applications for incident management. You can quickly start using these applications and adapt them to the specific situation in your organization.
Is your organization about to make the transition from paper to digital work? Or do you have a digital incident management system you want to replace? In both cases the best advice is to make a business case. Download our e-book and use it as a guide for writing your internal business case.
With our software, a complete Patient Safety platform is ready for you.
Access anytime, anywhere, securely managed in the cloud. Flexible and scalable to organize due to the modular structure. With many options to adjust each part to your own needs.
Quick and easy to set up. Due to the user-friendly design, no programming knowledge is required for the implementation. Our consultants are ready to help with your configuration.
Our software is a cost-efficient solution for patient safety management, because many of the building blocks have already been made for you! Suitable for both small and large organizations.
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Comeniusstraat 5, 1817 MS Alkmaar
+31 72 - 8200 400
info@patientsafety.com
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315 Capitol St.
Suite 100, Houston
TX 77002
+1 (281) 863 - 9500
We help healthcare organizations to increase safety for patients, employees and their workplace and to reduce risks. Therefore we develop software to easily collect and analyze quality data and to start and monitor improvement plans.
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