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Understanding Engagement With Incident Reporting Systems Among NHS Healthcare Professionals: A Cross-Sectional Study (17 November 2025)

Summary

Incident reporting systems are key components of a health systems patient safety infrastructure. Whilst widely implemented in the NHS, engagement with these systems varies across professional roles and settings. This study seeks to explore how healthcare professionals in the UK engage with incident reporting systems, identify perceived barriers, and gather suggestions for improvement.

Understanding Engagement With Incident Reporting Systems Among NHS Healthcare Professionals: A Cross… https://www.cureus.com/articles/428910-understanding-engagement-with-incident-reporting-systems-amon…

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Tony 2

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Yes I do find this useful, mostly because it supports my perspective, I suppose. 

At the heart of my motivation is frustration that the NHS keeps talking about systems thinking without, apparently, having spent much time exploring the discipline. When looking at what passes for a system model in the NHS, I've found that they almost invariably miss out on two to the fundamental elements of soft systems: i)  the feedback loop, without which there is no learning, and ii) a proper system description - a purposive system is not a thing but an evolving social construction that is best described as "a system to.........". 

Mark has identified the lack of feedback as one of his crucial concerns. Disengagement appears to be another, but if people felt they were participating in the evolution of "a system to" do whatever is under consideration, they might feel more positive about it. 

The third relevant aspect of my perspective concerns the multiplicity of reporting templates. As far as I can see, most of them relate in some way to systems thinking, so if during induction people were made aware of how systems thinking outside the NHS works, they would have an understanding of the basic model from which these NHS templates are derived. 

This would both enable them to critique those templates - for example the omission of feedback loops - and also provide understanding of the common underlying structure, which, if you'll excuse the jargon, is the essential principle of gestalt education. 

If anyone's interested I'll offer the PSL hub some examples of all this. 

Thanks, Mark.

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