Improving Incident Reporting Among Physician Trainees.

Area of Science:

• Patient Safety
• Medical Education
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Preventable medical harm is a significant cause of mortality in the US.
• Incident reporting systems are crucial for capturing medical errors and harm.
• Physician trainees underreport incidents, hindering patient safety efforts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of targeted education on incident reporting rates among physician trainees.
• To identify and address barriers to incident reporting in a resident physician population.

Main Methods:

• A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 73 resident physicians over 6 months.
• Intervention included laminated instructions and weekly patient safety rounds reinforcing reporting.
• Anonymous surveys pre- and post-intervention assessed reporting barriers, with statistical comparison of reporting rates.

Main Results:

• Median incident reports from trainees increased from 1 to 10 per month post-intervention (P=0.005).
• Primary barriers were not knowing how/what to report (72.6%/56.2%) and lack of time (42.5%).
• Fear of retaliation was reported by 13.7%; reports primarily concerned delayed patient care (40.9%) and medical errors (33.3%).

Conclusions:

• Real-time education and consistent reinforcement effectively increased incident reporting among resident physicians.
• This educational strategy shows promise for enhancing incident reporting in other healthcare institutions.
• Addressing knowledge gaps and time constraints can improve the capture of medical errors and harm.