title: Incident monitoring in psychiatry.
abstract: Critical Incident Monitoring (CIM) as an instrument of quality assurance (QA) has received increasing attention in recent years. The present study was developed to explore a potential role for CIM in QA for clinical psychiatry. A questionnaire was sent to psychiatrists and requested retrospective reporting of clinical incidents, and a pilot study of an inpatient-based incident reporting system was performed. All Fellows of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry (RANZCP) were sent a questionnaire. Eight psychiatric inpatient services were invited to participate in the pilot study. The returns of the questionnaires were aggregated and analysed to reveal a relatively small number of separate incident types, with little difference between the 'adverse outcome' and 'near-miss' categories. Similar results were found with the pilot study. It was concluded that the development of a unified incident reporting system for use by psychiatric clinicians and psychiatric services may add usefully to existing quality improvement processes.
authors.affiliation: Academic Psychiatry, Royal North Shore Hospital, St Leonards, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Parker
mesh_terms: D000928:Antidepressive Agents / Q000009:adverse effects; D014150:Antipsychotic Agents / Q000009:adverse effects; D001315:Australia; D003617:Dangerous Behavior; D004347:Drug Interactions; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D016651:Lithium Carbonate / Q000009:adverse effects; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy; D008996:Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors / Q000009:adverse effects; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011567:Psychiatric Department, Hospital; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs / Q000009:adverse effects; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012308:Risk Management; D016728:Self-Injurious Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D018571:Sentinel Surveillance; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016896:Treatment Outcome
chemical_list: D000928:Antidepressive Agents; D014150:Antipsychotic Agents; D008996:Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; D016651:Lithium Carbonate