Improvement of incident report description

Abstract

An incident report (IR) should be clear in description of the event which requires prompt responses. However, many IRs are written in a way difficult to understand the content of events, and necessary responses are frequently delayed. To address this problem, quality control methods were applied to improve the IR procedure. IR should include an initial summary of the event, be simple in description, display all events in a chronological order, and be objective. An example including these four items was given to staff, and some revisions were recommended to past inappropriate IRs. Consequently, IR including these four items proved to be more effective, and revisions of IRs have decreased. It was suggested that the IR which involves the initial summary of the event, with simple, chronological and objective description is useful.