Survey on critical incident reporting in a child and adolescent mental health service

To examine the prevalence and nature of critical incident reports at a generic child and adolescent mental health service.

This is a retrospective survey of all critical incident reports completed at a community based child and adolescent mental health service between 2008 and 2011. Information was obtained about the nature of incidents and actions taken.

In a three year period, only eighteen incident report forms were completed. Staff were most frequently the victims of the incidents (50%, n = 9), followed by clients (38.8%, n = 7) and parents of clients (11.1%, n = 2). Falls were the most common incident reports (44.4%, n = 8). Two incidences were related to physical aggression and threatening behaviour by clients.

Critical incident reporting was found to be uncommon overall. Most of the recorded incidents involved staff members and were of minor significance. Specific training for staff regarding incident reporting should be provided to ensure an acceptable standard of investigation is consistently carried out for all significant incidents.