Search

Studies of incident reporting in health care organizations have tended to focus on single cases, and to attend to earlier stages of reporting. This qualitative comparative case study looked at the different stages of the incident reporting process in the General Internal Medicine division and the Obstetrics and Neonatology divisions of a large hospital. The findings showed that there were major differences between the two divisions in terms of: a) what comprised a typical report (outcome based vs communication and near-miss based); b) how the reports were investigated (individual manager vs interdisciplinary team); c) outcomes of reporting (interventions having ambiguous linkages to the reporting system vs interventions having clear linkages to reported incidents), and d) feedback (limited feedback vs multiple feedback). The differences between these two divisions can be explained in terms of the influence of litigation on practice, the history of the two divisions with reporting, and availability or lack of interprofessional training. Implications for practice are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]