Medical error reporting
Study presents a route to help doctors with medical error reporting.
Medical error reporting by doctors to healthcare institutions, colleagues and patients, is not only important for patient safety, but also to professional education. However, in a recent report, researchers at the University of Iowa point out that variables that might facilitate or impede disclosure are diverse and lack conceptual organisation. Aiming to develop a comprehensive classification of factors that affect voluntary disclosure of errors by physicians, the team reviewed 316 articles, identifying 91 impeding or facilitating factors affecting doctors’ readiness to disclose errors. They also identified another 27 factors from exploratory focus groups reports.
By sorting and hierarchical cluster analysis, the team organised factors into eight areas. ‘Confirmatory focus groups and expert review relocated six factors, removed two factors, and modified four domain names,’ the researchers said. ‘The final taxonomy contained four domains of facilitating factors (responsibility to patient, responsibility to self, responsibility to profession, responsibility to community), and four domains of impeding factors (attitudinal barriers, uncertainties, helplessness, fears and anxieties).’
The classification could prove a valuable tool to aid in the design of error-reporting systems that would encourage the disclosure of errors by physicians. The study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (Vol. 21. September 2006). Authors: Lauris C Kaldjian; Elizabeth W Jones, Gary E. Rosenthal; Toni Tripp-Reimer and Stephen L Hillis.
30.08.2006
