Dataset Information

Improving incident reporting among junior doctors.

ABSTRACT: To ensure systems in hospitals improve to make patient care safer, learning must occur when things go wrong. Incident reporting is one of the commonest mechanisms used to learn from harm events and near misses. Only a relatively small number of incidents that occur are actually reported and different groups of staff have different rates of reporting. Nationally, junior doctors are low reporters of incidents, a finding supported by our local data. We set out to explore the culture and awareness around incident reporting among our junior doctors, and to improve the incident reporting rate within this important staff group. In order to achieve this we undertook a number of work programmes focused on junior doctors, including: assessment of their knowledge, confidence and understanding of incident reporting, education on how and why to report incidents with a focus on reporting on clinical themes during a specific time period, and evaluation of the experience of those doctors who reported incidents. Junior doctors were asked to focus on incident reporting during a one week period. Before and after this focussed week, they were invited to complete a questionnaire exploring their confidence about what an incident was and how to report. Prior to "Incident Reporting Week", on average only two reports were submitted a month by junior doctors compared with an average of 15 per month following the education and awareness week. This project highlights the fact that using a focussed reporting period and/or specific clinical themes as an education tool can benefit a hospital by promoting awareness of incidents and by increasing incident reporting rates. This can only assist in improving hospital systems, and ultimately increase patient safety.

SUBMITTER: Hotton E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4645800 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Improving incident reporting among junior doctors.

Hotton Emily E Jordan Lesley L Peden Carol C

BMJ quality improvement reports 20141103 1

To ensure systems in hospitals improve to make patient care safer, learning must occur when things go wrong. Incident reporting is one of the commonest mechanisms used to learn from harm events and near misses. Only a relatively small number of incidents that occur are actually reported and different groups of staff have different rates of reporting. Nationally, junior doctors are low reporters of incidents, a finding supported by our local data. We set out to explore the culture and awareness a ...[more]

PMID: 26734264

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Project description:ContextThe transition from medical student to junior doctor is challenging. Junior doctors need to become part of the physician community of practice (CoP), while dealing with new responsibilities, tasks and expectations. At the same time, they need to learn how to navigate the frontiers and intersections with the other communities of practice that form the Landscape of Practice (LoP). This study aims to understand how junior doctors experience interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and what elements shape these experiences considering their transition to clinical practice.MethodsIn this multicentre qualitative study, 13 junior doctors individually drew two rich pictures of IPC experiences, one positive and one negative. A rich picture is a visual representation, a drawing of a particular situation intended to capture the complex and non-verbal elements of an experience. We used semi-structured interviews to deepen the understanding of junior doctors' depicted IPC experiences. We analysed both visual materials and interview transcripts iteratively, for which we adopted an inductive constructivist thematic analysis.ResultsWhile transitioning into a doctor, junior doctors become foremost members of the physician CoP and shape their professional identity based on perceived values in their physician community. Interprofessional learning occurs implicitly, without input from the interprofessional team. As a result, junior doctors struggle to bridge the gap between themselves and the interprofessional team, preventing IPC learning from developing into an integrative process. This professional isolation leaves junior doctors wandering the landscape of practice without understanding roles, attitudes and expectations of others.ConclusionsLearning IPC needs to become a collective endeavour and an explicit learning goal, based on multisource feedback to take advantage of the expertise already present in the LoP. Furthermore, junior doctors need a safe environment to embrace and reflect on the emotions aroused by interprofessional interactions, under the guidance of experienced facilitators.

Dataset Information

Improving incident reporting among junior doctors.

Publications

Improving incident reporting among junior doctors.

Similar Datasets

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