The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
Briefings: A Tool to Improve Safety Culture in a Pediatric Emergency Room
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.
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