Transparent anonymous reporting the key to reducing medical error
Most members of the public believe healthcare workers should report medical errors and the individual responsible should be identified on the report, according to research published in the current issue of The Medical Journal of Australia.
A random representative survey of 2005 South Australians in April 2002 showed that two-thirds of respondents who were in favour of incident reporting believed healthcare workers should have to identify themselves, despite the suggestion that this might discourage people from reporting mistakes.
Co-author of the report, Sue Evans from the Clinical Epidemiology and Health Outcomes Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide, said overseas reports on medical error stressed the fundamental importance of incident reporting to identify when things go wrong.
She said mandatory incident reporting holds healthcare providers accountable for performance and provides information to improve safety. But many errors go unreported because of fear of personal repercussions.
"By withholding the reporter's details, people might assume that patient details are also withheld, and that the incident might not be fully investigated," Ms Evans said.
"Public confidence has been undermined by the considerable attention focused on medical errors, a perceived lack of transparency and the medical indemnity crisis.
"Consumer doubts about safety are likely to be fuelled by media coverage of adverse events.
"The individualising of errors is contrary to current quality improvement philosophy, which promotes a system-based approach to the handling of errors.
"The public desire for identified incident reporting provides a challenge for quality improvement programs to meet the needs of both consumers and healthcare workers.
"More education is needed about the complexities of errors in hospitals, and the vulnerability of healthcare workers to making mistakes.
"National and state quality improvement activities which focus on identifying system rather than individual flaws, as well as open-disclosure policies, will both assist the public in accepting healthcare worker anonymity and give healthcare workers the confidence to identify themselves on incident reports without fear of recrimination," Ms Evans said.
The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.
Journal Issue June 7, 2004
This media release was originally issued on Wednesday May 26, 2004
CONTACT Ms Sue Evans, 08 8222 6387 / 0408 510 921
Judith TOKLEY, AMA Public Affairs, 0408 824 306 / 02 6270 5471