Hospital ward incidents through the eyes of nurses – a thick description on the appeal and deadlock of incident reporting systems.
Tresfon J, van Winsen R, Brunsveld-Reinders AH, et al. Hospital ward incidents through the eyes of nurses - a thick description on the appeal and deadlock of incident reporting systems. Safety Sci. 2025;184:106728. doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2024.106728.
Incident reporting systems are considered an essential tool for learning from patient safety events, but concerns have been raised about their limitations. This ethnographic study, conducted at one Dutch neurology/neurosurgery ward, found that nurses struggle to define “report-worthy” events and question whether actions stemming from incident reports ultimately benefit patient safety.