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  • Title: [Risk management: the opinions of nursing staff and coordinators in a local health district in the Piemonte region (Italy)].
    Author: Barbieri A, Gallo N, Brambilla R, Panella M.
    Journal: Ig Sanita Pubbl; 2008; 64(4):447-68. PubMed ID: 18985081.
    Abstract:
    Clinical risk management includes a set of clinical and administrative activities performed to identify, evaluate and reduce risks for patients, staff and visitors as well as the organization itself. The first fundamental step in risk management is to evaluate risk factors; it is impossible to implement corrective actions and modify and eliminate risk factors if these are not known. The aim of this study was to evaluate the degree to which selected sentinel events were perceived by nursing staff as being severe and whether the degree of perceived severity of an event was associated with specific variables such as nursing work area (medical, surgical, intensive care), years of experience, degree and position. The study also aimed to evaluate the level of knowledge of clinical risk management, identify the main categories of errors within the organization, and evaluate nursing staff opinions on the use of an anonymous system to report errors. A sample of 98 nurses (91 female, 7 male), working in three hospitals in a local health district in the Piemonte region (Italy) participated in the study. The mean age of participants was 37 years (range 22-61). Participants were interviewed between 30 October and 6 November 2006, by using a structured questionnaire. Most participants (93%) were aware of the definition of risk management but over 60% did not use any tool for identifying clinical errors. Nurses perceived infections to be the most serious error, followed by medication errors and surgery and post-operative complications. Almost all participants (99%) considered it right to report errors and 59% admitted to having made errors, most frequently medication errors. Over 90% of participants agreed that an anonymous report form should be used for reporting. Healthcare professionals' willingness to cooperate and their ability to not play down the importance of sentinel events but rather voluntarily bring these to light are essential to the success of risk management in an organization. Clearly, patient safety does not depend on the single individual but rather on an interdisciplinary approach to problem notification and solving and collaboration among interdisciplinary team members.
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