Incident report

How it is used

Staff fill in, complete or submit an incident report, usually in an electronic reporting system. Managers encourage reporting: many reports of low-harm incidents often show a healthy safety culture rather than an unsafe hospital.

Example sentences

1. Please complete an incident report about the patient who fell in the bathroom.

2. Incident reports went up after we made the system anonymous.

Common collocations

• complete an incident report
• submit an incident report
• incident reporting system
• incident report form

Related terms

• adverse eventAn unintended event during healthcare that harms a patient and is caused by the care given rather than by the patient's illness.
• near missAn error or unsafe situation that was noticed and stopped before it could reach or harm a patient.
• root cause analysisA structured investigation after a serious incident that looks for the underlying system problems that allowed it to happen, not just at the person who made the mistake.
• safety cultureThe shared attitudes, beliefs and habits in an organisation that decide how openly people report errors, speak up about risks and learn from mistakes.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• incident report · Nursing

More terms: Patient Safety and Risk

• patient safety
• medication error
• hospital-acquired infection
• informed consent
• never event
• risk assessment