Incident reporting on hospital wards has improved, but nurses want more time and training to effect change, research from Radar Healthcare has found. The findings are reported in the whitepaper ‘Incident reporting in secondary care: An analysis of reporting rates and their effect on patient safety’ released today.
Radar Healthcare found that 92% of nurses log or report incidents immediately, and they are reasonably confident (mean average of 3.68/5) that the reports lead to better outcomes. However, inefficiencies remain in reporting method and timings. For example, over a quarter of nurses (26%) report verbally to senior staff who then log the incident themselves, and a third (35%) had to wait to be logged into their reporting system by senior staff.
The research also investigated potential barriers to accurate reporting. The vast majority of nurses surveyed said they needed more time to log incidents (95%), access to the right technology (97%), and extra training to report incidents (83%).
Feedback and training emerged as key to increasing staff engagement. Four in ten (41%) nurses missed opportunities to report incidents due to a poor response to previous reports, or no feedback at all. More than this, those receiving system training had a reporting rate 16% higher than untrained staff.
Paul Johnson, CEO of Radar Healthcare said, “The NHS has committed to improving patient safety through insight, involvement and improvement. It’s reassuring that they have made strides to meeting this 2023/24 goal, but it’s clear there is still work to be done.
“We often see hospitals using legacy systems and logging incidents out of habit, rather than to gain any insight from them. But it’s clear that front line staff want the tools and training to change this. In fact, the majority believe a centralised system is key to making reporting patient safety incidents easier and quicker.
“Giving nurses the technology needed to improve will help with patient safety, but also save time and admin. As the new Learn from Patient Safety Events service rolls out over the next few years, we will see even more learnings from incidents. It is vital that hospitals implement accessible, intuitive systems now to make a real difference.”
Other findings include:
- Almost half (43%) of nurses chose a centralised system as their top priority making reporting patient safety incidents easier and quicker.
- Older, more experienced staff members report fewer incidents than their younger, less experienced colleagues.
- Nearly one third of nurses thought the problem with improving patient safety through incident reporting is a technological one, not a cultural one.
- Six in ten nurses wanted to improve their current system with mobile access.
Read the full whitepaper here.
