ORIGINAL ARTICLES

¹ Princess Amalia Department of Paediatrics, Division of Neonatology, Isala Clinics, Zwolle, The Netherlands
² Juliana Children’s Hospital, Haga Hospital, The Hague, The Netherlands
³ Research Bureau, Isala Clinics, Zwolle, The Netherlands
⁴ Department of Paediatrics, Division of Neonatology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
⁵ Division of Patient Safety, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium
⁶ Faculty of Technology Management, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

C Snijders, Haga Hospital, Location Juliana Children’s Hospital, Sportlaan 600, 2566 MJ The Hague, The Netherlands; c.snijders{at}grimbergen.net

Objectives: To examine the characteristics of incidents reported after introduction of a voluntary, non-punitive incident reporting system for neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in the Netherlands; and to investigate which types of reported incident pose the highest risk to patients in the NICU.

Design: Prospective multicentre survey.

Methods: Voluntary, non-punitive incident reporting was introduced in eight level III NICUs and one paediatric surgical ICU. An incident was defined as any unintended event which (could have) reduced the safety margin for the patient. Multidisciplinary, unit-based patient safety committees systematically collected and analysed incident reports, and assigned risk scores to each reported incident. Data were centrally collected for specialty-based analysis. This paper describes the characteristics of incidents reported during the first year. Bivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify high-risk incident categories.

Results: There were 5225 incident reports on 3859 admissions, of which 4846 were eligible for analysis. Incidents with medication were most frequently reported (27%), followed by laboratory (10%) and enteral nutrition (8%). Severe harm was described in seven incident reports, and moderate harm in 63 incident reports. Incidents involving mechanical ventilation and blood products were most likely to be assigned high-risk scores, followed by those involving parenteral nutrition, intravascular lines and medication dosing errors.

Conclusions: Incidents occur much more frequently in Dutch NICUs than has been previously observed, and their impact on patient morbidity is considerable. Reported incidents concerning mechanical ventilation, blood products, intravascular lines, parenteral nutrition and medication dosing errors pose the highest risk to patients in the NICU.

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