Where are we in patient safety in the ED in Turkey?

Abstract

Near misses and unsafe conditions have become more serious for patients in emergency departments (EDs). We aimed to search the near misses and unsafe conditions that occurred in an ED to improve patient safety.This was a retrospective analysis of a 10-year observational period from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2016. We gained access to the adverse event notification forms (AENFs) sent to the hospital quality department from the ED. Patient age, sex, and date of presentation were recorded. The near misses and unsafe conditions were classified into 7 types: medication errors, falls, management errors, penetrative-sharp tool injuries, incidents due to institution security, incidents due to medical equipment, and forensic events. The outcome of these events was recorded.A total of 220 AENF were reported from 294,673 ED visits. The median age of the 166 patients was 60 (21–95) years. Of these, 57.1% of the patients were females and 47.9% were males. The most commonly reported events were medication errors (32.7%) and management errors (27.3%). The median age of falling patients was 67.5 years. The nurse–patient ratio between 2007 to 2011 and 2011 to 2016 were 1/10 and 1/7, respectively. We found that when this ratio increased, the adverse events results were less significant (P < .003).This was the 1st study investigating the adverse events in ED in Turkey. The reporting ratio of 0.07% for the total ED visits was too low. This showed that adverse events were under-reported.