Changing the culture: increasing captured intraoperative anaesthesia-related safety events through targeted...

There is an under-reporting of anaesthesia-related safety events.¹⁰ Incident-capturing systems (ICSs) are essential for patient safety monitoring, identifying risks and ongoing opportunities for improvement. After a literature review and assessment of our current ICSs, we concluded that our institution lacked a reliable anaesthesia-specific ICS system, leading to under-reporting of anaesthesia-related safety events.

We conducted a quality improvement initiative to help increase perioperative safety event reporting by anaesthesiologists, fellows and certified registered nurse anaesthetists. We analysed all anaesthesia-related perioperative safety events from July 2019 to December 2020 to determine a baseline rate of safety events captured. We conducted a simplified failure-mode effects analysis and designed a key driver diagram to guide our initiative. Based on these, we designed and implemented seven interventions aimed at increasing anaesthesia-related perioperative safety event reporting. We then reviewed perioperative safety events captured from January 2021 to February 2023 and compared the safety event capture rate to baseline.

Over 10 months, we trialled and implemented multiple interventions aimed at increasing perioperative anaesthesia-related safety event capture, including re-education, strategic placement of report forms, education of anaesthesia and non-anaesthesia personnel, celebration of events captured, promotion of a safe-capture culture where reporting was not seen as punitive and the transition to an online anaesthesia ICS. Over 25 months, we demonstrated a sustained increase in event reporting from a baseline of 1.9 incidents captured per week (average of 1000 cases performed weekly) to 19 events captured per week postinterventions.

Increasing event reporting required a multifaceted approach-ongoing attention to reporting barriers and developing targeted interventions promoting sustained reporting. Education on the importance of reporting, creating a reliable electronic ICS, creating a non-punitive culture and continuing to promote a safety culture contributed to system improvement.