Review of patient safety incidents submitted from Critical Care Units in England & Wales to the UK National Patient Safety Agency.

We reviewed and classified all patient safety incidents submitted from critical care units in England and Wales to the National Patient Safety Agency for the first quarter of 2008. A total of 6649 incidents were submitted from 141 organisations (median (range) 23 (1-268 incidents)); 786 were unrelated to the critical care episode and 248 were repeat entries. Of the remaining 5615 incidents, 1726 occurred in neonates or babies, 1298 were associated with temporary harm, 15 with permanent harm and 59 required interventions to maintain life or may have contributed to the patient's death. The most common main incident groups were medication (1450 incidents), infrastructure and staffing (1289 incidents) and implementation of care (1047 incidents). There were 2789 incidents classified to more than one main group. The incident analysis highlights ways to improve patient safety and to improve the classification of incidents.

Medication-related patient safety incidents in critical care: a review of reports to the UK National Patient Safety Agency.

We reviewed all patient safety incidents reported to the UK National Patient Safety Agency between 1st August 2006 and 28th February 2007 from intensive care or high dependency units. Incidents involving medications were then categorised. 12 084 incidents were submitted from 151 organisations (median 40, range 1-634/organisation). 2428 incidents were associated with medication use involving 355 different drugs, most commonly morphine (207 incidents), gentamicin (190 incidents) and noradrenaline (133 incidents). Noradrenaline (55 incidents of harm) and insulin (48 incidents of harm) were most commonly associated with patient harm. Sixty-one percent of medication incidents were associated with drug administration and 26% with prescription. Two hundred and eighty-seven medication incidents caused temporary harm and 43 more than temporary harm. Five per cent of medication incidents were associated with staff communication during transfer from theatre or recovery. Categorisation of medication-associated incidents has allowed us to suggest changes to improve the reporting of incidents and to improve medication safety.