An evaluation of departmental radiation oncology incident reports: anticipating a national reporting system

Systems to ensure patient safety are of critical importance. The electronic incident reporting systems (IRS) of 2 large academic radiation oncology departments were evaluated for events that may be suitable for submission to a national reporting system (NRS).

All events recorded in the combined IRS were evaluated from 2007 through 2010. Incidents were graded for potential severity using the validated French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) 5-point scale. These incidents were categorized into 7 groups: (1) human error, (2) software error, (3) hardware error, (4) error in communication between 2 humans, (5) error at the human-software interface, (6) error at the software-hardware interface, and (7) error at the human-hardware interface.

Between the 2 systems, 4407 incidents were reported. Of these events, 1507 (34%) were considered to have the potential for clinical consequences. Of these 1507 events, 149 (10%) were rated as having a potential severity of ≥2. Of these 149 events, the committee determined that 79 (53%) of these events would be submittable to a NRS of which the majority was related to human error or to the human-software interface.

A significant number of incidents were identified in this analysis. The majority of events in this study were related to human error and to the human-software interface, further supporting the need for a NRS to facilitate field-wide learning and system improvement.