Using Close Calls and Near Misses to Improve Patient Safety

摘要

Healthcare technology management (HTM) departments and professionals play an integral role in understanding device and patient safety because they are the ones who manage clinical technologies. However, when everyone is engaged in improving patient safety, from top leadership to staff in nonclinical departments, the safety culture is much stronger. One characteristic of a strong culture of safety is being in touch with the frontline staff who use technology every day. Reporting close calls shows that this staff is engaged and that they take time to report events that did not lead to harm but require follow-up. Having these reports analyzed by a diverse interdisciplinary team can help point to weaknesses or vulnerabilities within a system that can benefit from further improvement. Reviewing data on near misses in aggregate can potentially uncover a particular technology issue, especially if they are reported from various care areas throughout a health system or hospital and/or by multiple user types-nurses, medical technicians, HTM professionals, and so on.