Intended for healthcare professionals

Letters Military aviation and healthcare

Medical incident reporting needs a global online system

BMJ 2013; 347 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f6166 (Published 15 October 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f6166
  1. Michael W Denning, acute care common stem anaesthetics core trainee year 21
  1. 1Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Kingston upon Thames KT2 7QB, UK
  1. michael.denning{at}kingstonhospital.nhs.uk

As an ex-Royal Marine helicopter pilot and anaesthetics trainee I think that incident reporting is the one area where we can, and must, learn from an effective military system.1 The reporting of medical and surgical incidents is currently a mysterious and tribal procedure, with specialties and subspecialties reporting through their own journals and online systems. But does the information ever reach the correct people? By contrast, military pilots are required to enter the details of an incident within a specific time frame and the data are forwarded to all relevant pilots almost instantly.

London Deanery anaesthetics trainees were recently surveyed and asked if they knew where to report an incident or near-miss, and how and where they would report it. Although 88% stated that they knew where to report an incident, answers to where it should be reported lacked any common theme. The leading two responses were hospital intranet (37%) and DATIX systems (35%). However, the other 28% of suggestions included patient’s notes, departmental meetings, the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal College of Anaesthetists, and other clinical governance bodies.

This result suggests that the procedure is far from clear. Medical incident reporting needs a global online system free from interspecialty territorialism. It should be managed by a major medical organisation, most likely the General Medical Council, and the reading, or at least viewing, of the material it contains must become mandatory. The material must be filtered, prioritised, and channelled to the correct people to prevent thousands of irrelevant incidents being fired to uninterested parties. The days of A4 messages on fridge doors announcing the most recent safety announcements must, for the sake of everybody’s health, come to an end.

Notes

Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f6166

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