Patient safety incident-reporting items in Korean hospitals

To examine incident-reporting items in tertiary hospitals using the framework of the World Health Organization's International Classification for Patient Safety (ICPS).

Cross-sectional survey.

Forty acute-care tertiary hospitals in Korea (response rate = 90.9%).

Data were collected using a semistructured questionnaire during on-site interviews or via e-mail. Items were extracted from incident-reporting forms that required a reporter's input, and were analyzed using the ICPS framework. After removing redundant items, unique reporting items were mapped onto ICPS elements. The data are summarized using descriptive statistics.

On average, hospitals used 2.4 incident-reporting forms (range = 1-9) and 136.7 reporting items (range = 31-310). All of the hospitals had incident-reporting items that described 'incident type' and 'incident characteristics'; however, only 7 hospitals (17.5%) had reporting items on incident 'detection', and 18 hospitals (45.0%) collected information on the 'organizational outcomes'. Of the 1145 unique reporting items, 297 (25.9%) were completely mapped onto ICPS elements at different levels of granularity, and 12.7% (n = 145) were mapped onto ICPS elements that had more granular subcategories.

The ICPS framework is a useful reference model for the classification of incident-reporting items. However, further refinements to both the ICPS framework and incident-reporting items are needed in order to better represent data on patient safety. Furthermore, the use of a common reporting form at the national level is recommended for reducing variations in reporting items and facilitating the efficient collection and analysis of patient safety data.