title: Voluntary incident reporting by anaesthetic trainees in an Australian hospital.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the reporting of critical incidents by anaesthetic trainees using personal digital assistants. The project also identified the reporting of 'near miss' incidents by anaesthetic trainees.
  
  
  METHODS
  Comparison of electronic incident reporting with retrospective case note review of cases in which no incident was reported.
  
  
  METHODS
  A 400-bed university teaching hospital in Victoria.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fourteen accredited Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) registrars and their training supervisors.
  
  
  METHODS
  Registrars and supervisors underwent initial training for 1 hour and were provided with ongoing support. The cases and incidents reported to the database using the portable digital assistants were analysed.
  
  
  METHODS
  These were the total number of anaesthetics reported to the database; the number of incidents reported to the database; the outcome severity of incidents reported; and the number of incidents detected in the case note review that were not reported to the database.
  
  
  RESULTS
  An incident was reported for 156 (3.5%) of 4441 anaesthetic procedures reported to the database. Of these incidents, 72 (46.2%) were 'near misses'. One incident was identified in a review of 208 case notes, which had no incidents reported electronically, and was not reported to the database electronically. This gives a reporting rate of 99.52% [95% confidence interval (CI) 96.9-100%].
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ANZCA trainees in routine anaesthetic practice can reliably use mobile computing technology to report critical incidents and 'near miss' incident data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia, The Geelong Hospital, Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Liadaine
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Freestone
authors.forename: Stephen N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Bolsin
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Colson
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Patrick
authors.forename: Bernie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Creati
mesh_terms: D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000193:education / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012308:Risk Management / Q000379:methods*; D014739:Victoria