Radar Healthcare's White paper: Incident Reporting in Secondary Care (27 October 2022)

Summary

Radar Healthcare has published its 'Incident Reporting in Secondary Care' whitepaper – an in-depth analysis of reporting within secondary care and its effects on patient safety. It has taken a look into the current state of incident reporting: the good work being done, the concerns across the sector, and how we can all aim to improve the situation.

The report was conducted using a panel provided by SERMO from its database of UK Nurses and includes the views from 100 nursing staff members working in hospital wards across the UK. Those surveyed work with hospital in-patients daily and are responsible for reporting safety and regulatory incidents involving patients to senior colleagues.

Content

The NHS has been prioritising patient safety for the last few years, with the patient safety strategy focusing on three main aims: insight, involvement and improvement. Because of this, 1,000 extra lives could be saved along with a reduction of £100 million in care costs each year from 2023/24.

Secondary care is yet to catch up on these goals. Radar Healthcare commissioned this report to get a glimpse into where we are today in regards to reporting, and to look into how we can work towards making improvements.

Whatever the topic of the event, incident reporting provides vital insight into what can go wrong in healthcare and the best ways to improve. A well-defined reporting process and positive culture, combined with using a digital risk management system, can be transformational for primary and secondary care.

Key statistics

The survey’s results showed some very promising results: 92% of secondary care nursing staff say they log or report incidents immediately. Although, over a quarter of nurses (26%) only reported them verbally to senior staff who log the incidents themselves. Some (9%) said they passed a handwritten report to senior staff. This meant in total 35% of nurses report incidents to senior staff who then have to log the incidents themselves. A small number (6%) of nurses had to wait until the end of their shift to report at all.

Staff felt that on average 40% of their reports don’t lead to better patient outcomes.

The vast majority of ward nurses agreed that they needed more time (95%), access to the right technology (97%) and extra training (83%) to report incidents.

With further in-depth analysis, Radar Healthcare looks at the reasons behind these findings and their effects on patient safety.