Blame and shame in the veterinary profession: barriers and facilitators to reporting significant events

Significant event reporting is an important concept for patient safety in human medicine, but substantial barriers to the discussion and reporting of adverse events have been identified. This study explored the factors that influence the discussion and reporting of significant events among veterinary surgeons and nurses. Purposive sampling was used to generate participants for six focus groups consisting of a range of veterinary professionals of different ages and roles (mean N per group=9). Thematic analysis of the discussions identified three main themes: the effect of culture, the influence of organisational systems and the emotional effect of error. Fear, lack of time or understanding and organisational concerns were identified as barriers, while the effect of feedback, opportunity for learning and structure of a reporting system facilitated error reporting. Professional attitudes and culture emerged as both a positive and negative influence on the discussion of error. The results were triangulated against the findings in the medical literature and highlight common themes in clinician's concerns regarding the discussion of professional error. The results of this study have been used to inform the development of the 'VetSafe' tool, a web-based central error reporting system.