Risk Management Assignment

Unit 5, 6 and 7

Risk Management Assignment

Unit 5 Answer 1

Incidents are outliers, events that may be outside of the expected range of operational or clinical occurrences. Incidents may be events that give rise to claims and litigation (Unit 5 p.86). Points of information that must be included in incident reporting are:

Date, time and place of incident

Brief description of what happened

Individuals/equipment involved

Resultant injury

Treatment given, if any

(Wirral Hospital, 2005)

Incident reporting system has been implemented in health care centers from 1970 in order to identify and address actual or potential risks. My organization's reporting process is easy to access and comprehend. The person interested in reporting an incident, needs only to fill a simple form that is available in each department and is also available online. The form contains few basic questions highlighted above. Person filling the form has to provide his identity that will be kept confidential. Next is to give time, date and place of incident, with precise facts about the incident. The person reporting has to give details about no of people or any equipment involved, consequences of the incident and any treatment given or action taken at the time of incident.

In order to make the reporting system efficient, organization conducts sessions for its employees to make them aware of what incidents shall be reported. It is advised that incidents should be reported within a day of occurrence. The reports are daily assessed by the risk management team and necessary actions are taken accordingly.

Unit 5 Answer 2

Underreporting of incidents is a major issue confronted by risk managers. Despite of the fact that incident reporting system designed is easy to access, there still remain a high number of incidents that are not reported. Most common of the underreported events are related to medication incidents. Factors contributing towards underreporting could be work pressure, fear of any disciplinary action, inefficient reporting system and decreased importance of incident reporting system among the employees.

Risk managers always strive to improve the quality of incident reporting system. As mentioned earlier, incident reporting forms shall be easily accessible, simple and precise, less time consuming and complaint. Incident reporting should always be acknowledged and encouraged. Feedbacks regarding the utility and affectivity of an incident reported motivate the staff for incident reporting. There are several means recommended for risk managers to address underreporting. Some of them are as follows:

Automated easily accessible forms should be used for incident reporting

Confidentiality of incident reports should be maintained

The incident report should never be copied or released (except for legal purpose)

All the incidents reported should be evaluated timely and feedbacks given to the reporter

Identity of the person reporting should be kept confidential

All reported incidents should be followed up regularly

All hospital staff shall be well acquainted with incident reporting system

No blames shall be entertained in the incident report form

Employees should be encouraged to report all incidents of minor significance even

Employees shall be assured that their names will be kept in secret (Unit 5, p.91-92)

Like every other organization, underreporting is a significant ...