Briefings: A Tool to Improve Safety Culture in a Pediatric Emergency Room

摘要

Background: Safety briefings are short, informative meetings intended to integrate a culture of patient safety into dailyclinical practice, which contributes to identifying risks and improving quality. The objective of this study is to present safetybriefings as a method for discovering and addressing safety events in a pediatric emergency room, describe how professionalsperceive them, and characterize the classification and evolution of the incidents identified.Methods: This observational, descriptive, analytical study was performed in the pediatric emergency department of atertiary hospital in 2018–2019. The incidents reported during the briefings were counted, classified, and analyzed. Resultsof a 10-item survey on the usefulness of the briefings in identifying and managing risks are described.Results: A total of 498 briefings were analyzed, in which 1,180 incidents were reported (1 incident/96 emergency cases;2.4 incidents/meeting). The category with the most incidents was Communication. The number of incidents fell by 24.4%between 2018 and 2019 ( p < 0.01), mostly in the Identification (47.8%) and Communication (33.8%) categories. Seventy-seven surveys were analyzed. In 97.4% of the analyzed surveys, the person surveyed considered the briefings to be useful inimproving patient safety; 90.9% considered notification via briefings to be more convenient than through electronic means.In 35.1%, the person surveyed was not satisfied with the information received on incident management.Conclusion: Patient safety briefings are perceived as a useful tool to report incidents, and incidents related to communicationoccur most frequently. Safety briefings are perceived as useful for improving patient safety in pediatric emergencyrooms, and this method of notification is considered more convenient than other methods.