Efforts to increase incident report numbers in our clinical laboratory

Abstract

Improving medical safety requires the submission of as many incident reports as possible. In our examination room, since the fiscal year 2018, we have adopted the slogan “one report, platinum report” and started efforts to increase the number of reports. As clear objectives, we set out to increase the number of level 0a and 1 reports by 50% compared to the previous year, conduct medical safety rounds, and ensure thorough barcode labeling on specimen containers. To improve the reporting process, the committee streamlined report submission, significantly reducing the workload for incident discoverers and lowering the psychological barrier to reporting incidents. For sharing reports with the nursing department, we discussed incident classification and prioritized thorough labeling of specimen containers, sharing the reports accordingly. Before and after these efforts, the total number of reports increased from 326 to 1,471, approximately 4.5 times higher. Particularly, level 0a reports increased from 41 to 465, about 11.3 times higher. The number of reports related to labeling errors increased from 78 to 649, about 8.3 times higher. This significant increase was attributed to clearly stating the need for reporting labeling errors and the committee’s streamlined report submission process, which reduced the workload for incident discoverers, making it easier to report incidents. In the future, we would like to utilize the abundant reports to identify root causes, develop effective countermeasures, and improve medical safety.