CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Avicenna J Med 2021; 11(03): 139-144
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1734386
Original Article

Perceived Barriers of Incident Reporting Among Internists: Results from Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar

Mouhand F.H. Mohamed
1   Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad General Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar
,
Ibrahim Y. Abubeker
2   Department of Medicine, Brown Internal Medicine Residency, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States
,
Dabia Al-Mohanadi
1   Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad General Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar
,
Ahmed Al-Mohammed
1   Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad General Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar
,
Abdul-Badi Abou-Samra
1   Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad General Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar
3   Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar
,
Abdel-Naser Elzouki
1   Department of Internal Medicine, Hamad General Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar
3   Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar
4   Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar
› Institutsangaben
Funding None.

Abstract

Background Adverse events (AE) are responsible for annual deaths that exceed deaths due to motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS. Many AE are considered preventable. Thus, AE needs to be detected and analyzed. Incident reporting systems (IRS) are crucial in identifying AE. Nevertheless, the incident report (IR) process is flawed with underreporting, especially from the physicians' side. This limits its efficiency in detecting AE. Therefore, we aimed to assess the practice and identify the barriers associated with incident reporting among internal medicine physicians in a large tertiary hospital through a survey.

Methods A cross-sectional descriptive study. We distributed an online survey to physicians working in the Internal Medicine Department of Qatar's largest tertiary academic institute. The questionnaire was validated and piloted ahead of the start of the trial. The response rate was 53%.

Results A total of 115 physicians completed the survey; 59% acknowledged the availability of an institutional IRS. However, only 29% knew how to submit an online IR, and 20% have ever submitted an IR. The survey revealed that participants were less likely to submit an IR when they or a colleague is involved in the incident; 46% and 63%, respectively. The main barriers of reporting incidents were unawareness about the IRS (36%) and the perception that IR will not bring a system change (13%); moreover, there exists the fear of retaliation (13%). When asked about solutions, 57% recommended training and awareness, and 22% recommended sharing learnings and actions from previous IR.

Conclusions IRS is underutilized by internal medicine physicians. The main barrier at the time of the survey is the lack of training and awareness. Promoting awareness and sharing previous learning and actions may improve the utilization of the IRS.



Publikationsverlauf

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
31. August 2021

© 2021. Syrian American Medical Society. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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