Patient and healthcare worker safety risks and injuries. Learning from incident reporting

Abstract

Objectives: Learning from incident reporting systems is one core strategy to develop a culture of safety for healthcare workers and patients. The aim of this retrospective study was to explore patient injuries focussing on falls. Furthermore, on healthcare workers incidents, injuries and the situations they occurred.

Method: A total of 65,749 patient risks and incidents were registered in the incident reporting system between 2011 and 2014. Of these, 11,006 were classified as an injury to a patient. Risks and incidents were registered and analysed for 1702 healthcare workers.

Results: Fifteen percent of the patient injuries required treatment. Falls were reported in 17% of the cases. Patients fell mainly in unassisted situations. Healthcare workers’ incidents and injuries were registered mainly by nurses and assistant nurses. Sixteen percent of the injuries required treatment. Prevalence of incidents was on an average 3.5% each year. Common injuries were: needle stick, workplace violence, injuries during patient manual handling. The patient was present in 74% of all incidents.

Conclusion: Patient and healthcare workers injuries are still prevalent in Swedish healthcare and a substantial part of the incidents involved a patient situation. Collaboration between employers, employees and patient representatives is needed to increase awareness of safety in healthcare.

Keywords:

• Health services
• patient safety
• occupational safety
• nurses
• physical therapists
• Sweden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Region Östergötland County.