Briefings: A Tool to Improve Safety Culture in a Pediatric Emergency Room

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2020.08.004Get rights and content

Background

Safety briefings are short, informative meetings intended to integrate a culture of patient safety into daily clinical practice, which contributes to identifying risks and improving quality. The objective of this study is to present safety briefings as a method for discovering and addressing safety events in a pediatric emergency room, describe how professionals perceive them, and characterize the classification and evolution of the incidents identified.

Methods

This observational, descriptive, analytical study was performed in the pediatric emergency department of a tertiary hospital in 2018–2019. The incidents reported during the briefings were counted, classified, and analyzed. Results of a 10-item survey on the usefulness of the briefings in identifying and managing risks are described.

Results

A total of 498 briefings were analyzed, in which 1,180 incidents were reported (1 incident/96 emergency cases; 2.4 incidents/meeting). The category with the most incidents was Communication. The number of incidents fell by 24.4% between 2018 and 2019 (p < 0.01), mostly in the Identification (47.8%) and Communication (33.8%) categories. Seventy-seven surveys were analyzed. In 97.4% of the analyzed surveys, the person surveyed considered the briefings to be useful in improving patient safety; 90.9% considered notification via briefings to be more convenient than through electronic means. In 35.1%, the person surveyed was not satisfied with the information received on incident management.

Conclusion

Patient safety briefings are perceived as a useful tool to report incidents, and incidents related to communication occur most frequently. Safety briefings are perceived as useful for improving patient safety in pediatric emergency rooms, and this method of notification is considered more convenient than other methods.

Section snippets

Methods

An observational, descriptive, analytical study was carried out in the pediatric emergency department of a tertiary hospital, which sees approximately 55,000 emergency cases each year. The study was conducted between January 2018 and December 2019.

Results

In this study, 498 safety briefings from between January 2018 and December 2019 were analyzed. For the 113,135 emergency visits during this period, 1,180 safety incidents and near misses were reported during these meetings (1 incident per 96 emergency cases, an average of 2.4 incidents per meeting).

The category with the most volume of reported incidents was Communication, with 256 incidents (21.7% of the total). The number of incidents by category and year is shown in Table 1. The total number

Discussion

The importance of safety meetings has been recognized for decades in sectors that are pioneers in safety culture, such as aviation.5 Their usefulness in the health sector has been previously described; they have been implemented in medical and surgical departments,13,14 specifically in pediatrics and the pediatric emergency unit.8,15 A systematic review by Ryan et al. showed that these briefings have a positive impact on patient safety,4 reflected in an increase in incidents being reported,

Conclusion

Patient safety briefings are a useful tool to report incidents and risk identification; incidents related to communication are the most frequent. Safety briefings are perceived as useful for improving patient safety in the pediatric emergency room, and this method of notification is considered more convenient than electronic notification systems.

References (23)

  • Daily safety briefings—a hallmark of high reliability

    Quick Safety

    (Jun 2017)
  • Cited by (3)

    View full text