Practice, perceived barriers and motivatingfactors to medical-incident reporting:

Abstract

Background:Medical-incident reporting (MIR) ensures patient safety and delivery of quality of care by minimizingunintentional harm among health care providers. We explored medical-incident reporting practices, perceivedbarriers and motivating factors among health care providers at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital (MRRH). Methods:We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study on 158 health provider at Mbarara Regional ReferralHospital (MRRH), Western Uganda. Data was gathered using a structured questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS. Thechi-square was used to determine factors associated with MIR at MRRH. Results:The results showed that there was no formal incident reporting structure. However the medical-incidencesidentified were: medication errors (89.9%), diagnostic errors (71.5%), surgical errors (52.5%) and preventive error(47.7%). The motivating factors of MIR were: establishment of a good communication system, instituting correctiveaction on the reported incidents and reinforcing health workers knowledge on MIR (p-value 0.004); presence ofeffective organizational systems like: written guidelines, practices of open door policy, no blame approach, andteam work were significantly associated with MIR (p-value 0.000). On the other hand, perceived barriers to MIRwere: lack of knowledge on incidents and their reporting, non-existence of an incident reporting team and fear ofbeing punished (p- value 0.669). Conclusion:Medical Incident Reporting at MRRH was sub-optimal. Therefore setting up an incident managementteam and conducting routine training MIR among health care workers will increase patient safety.