Voluntary incident reporting by anaesthetic trainees in an Australian hospital.
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.
Freestone
Liadaine
L
Department of Anaesthesia, The Geelong Hospital, Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
Bolsin
Stephen N
SN
Colson
Mark
M
Patrick
Andrew
A
Creati
Bernie
B
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