Implementing an intervention to improve adverse incident reporting in the hospital setting: A pilot study

Objective: This pilot study evaluated an intervention designed to increase error reporting among physicians. Research was conducted at University Hospital A, where data were collected from April 2017 to March 2019. The intervention began in April 2018 and consisted of the four following steps: define reporting standards, improve the incident reporting system, have the hospital administrators set clear goals and begin a visualized feedback process, and achieve support and appropriate feedback from the hospital administrator. Results: Physicians’ reporting rates were higher in FY 2018 than 2017. Particularly, differences began to occur in November of FY 2018 (p < 0.05, analysed using Fisher’s exact test). Further, the number of reports submitted by non-physicians increased by 900 in FY 2018 compared to those in FY 2017. Based on these results, the intervention effectively increased incident reporting rates among not only physicians, but also other staff members. In this regard, reporting barriers were broken when hospital administrators encouraged employees to submit incident reports.