Understanding adverse incident responses in mental health care: a qualitative study of systems-based patient safety practices (9 May 2025)

Summary

A key part of the patient safety system is how it responds to and learns from safety incidents. To date, there is limited research on understanding system- based approaches to investigating incidents that occur within this complex interacting system. The aims of this study were to qualitatively explore mental health professionals’ perceptions of patient safety incident investigations; to understand the impact of the transition to systems-based approaches and to explore the influence of different elements of the system on the goals of patient safety.