From the loss of equipment to billing errors to incorrect medication, incidents can occur inside a hospital. Acknowledging this is essential: by analyzing the reported events, we can address our shortcomings and establish measures for improvement. This is why the HUG encourages the reporting of incidents.
At the beginning of the 2000s, an incident management system was deployed across several departments, before being gradually rolled out across the hospital. Each division now has an incident management group, coordinated within each department by a Quality Officer. Since 2007, each employee reports incidents using an electronic app. This also gives the departments the ability to document the results of analyses, establish action plans and monitor their implementation.
More than 80 incident groups, in which nearly 400 employees participate, to varying degrees, are in charge of incident handling (analysis, classification, suggested improvements).
Since the implementation of these measures, reported incidents have risen sharply from some 250 in the year 2000 to more than 7,000 in recent years. This remarkable rise is due to the involvement and trust of our staff.
Serious adverse events, which involve harm to the patient, employees or the institution, are reported to senior management. They are investigated by an interdisciplinary group that analyzes system failures and recommends service improvements. Since 2017, risk-bearing events that may have an impact in other hospitals are reported on CIRRNET (Critical Incident Reporting & Reacting NETwork). This national incident reporting network is managed by the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation.
Since 2008, Geneva University Hospitals have worked with this foundation to train health professionals in French-speaking Switzerland to analyze incidents and serious adverse events.
60% of employees
have contributed to reporting an incident during the year
92% of incident reports
are named