The share of adverse events from patients' complaints: A case study

Abstract

Introduction: Adverse events are among the important challenges that health systems in all countries are grappling with and they are attempting to minimize them and reduce the damages caused by them. In the meantime, complainant is expressing dissatisfaction, which needs the accountability and auditing. Only a small proportion of dissatisfaction with the Health Care System is reflected in complaints. This paper aims at investigating the proportion of adverse events in the complaints of individuals referring to the Deputy of Treatment of an Iranian Province, which is the authority to respond the complaints from the real and legal people, who are health services providers. Materials and Methods: This is a cross‑sectional retrospective descriptive research. The population of the study has been the cases of complaints referring to the Deputy of Treatment in 2012. All the registered cases have been studied. For data collection, we used extended checklists of the Deputy of Treatment in which their face and content validity have been approved by the experts. Data was extracted from the files and it was described using the frequency distribution table in Excel. Results: The findings showed that in 2012, 587 cases of complaint were submitted to the Deputy of Treatment, of which 504 cases (85/86%) were related to the first six months of the year and 83 cases (14/14%) were for the second half of the year. Most complaints from individuals were about the “physician”, and from the healthservice providers have been related to the “hospital”. The results of the study also indicated that the care processes have been the major subject of the complaints. Conclusion: According to the findings of the research, adverse events have been ranked as the third reason for complaints. Failure to provide appropriate and correct treatment has been the most common in interpreting adverse events. Since most of the errors and malpractices are revealed after the patient or his family’s complaint, investigation of the complaints referred to the regulatory systems of health service areas by revealing frequency of errors and occurred malpractices, and also by providing appropriate and effective solutions can reduce adverse events and provide the consumers of health services with more satisfaction.