Adverse Event Analysis

Statement of the Problem

Since the healthcare system is responsible for providing care for patients, it’s unacceptable for these organisations to be causing harm to patients.1 It has become well recognised globally that hospitals and other healthcare organisations are not safe as they should be.1 Adverse events (AEs) in hospitals are now widely agreed to be a serious problem, annually killing more people than vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined.2 An Adverse event (AE) is usually defined as “an unintended injury or complication resulting in prolonged hospital stay, disability at the time of discharge or death and caused by healthcare management rather than by the patient’s underlying disease process”.3 AEs are also defined as “injuries that result from medical management rather than the underlying disease and are preventable”.1

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that globally, every year 1 in every 10 patients suffer injuries or die as a result of adverse events. 4 The widely recognised Institute of Medicine (IOM) report entitled “To Err is Human” estimated that each year between 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die annually as a result of medical errors. 1 Medical errors can be defined as “the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended or the use of a

Recent evidence in the USA shows that roughly one in three patients experienced an AE, and in 6% of cases, AE is severe enough to prolong the patients’ hospitalisation and send them home with a permanent or temporary disability.6 In Canada, it has been estimated that the overall incidence rate of AEs is 7.5%, and 40 % of these events are potentially preventable.7 An Australian research has estimated the prevalence of medical errors and patients’ injuries in the Australian healthcare system to be 16.6 % of total 14,179 admissions, 51% of the adverse events were considered preventable.8 The financial cost of these AEs has been estimated to range from $ 483 to $ 900 million per