Incident reporting and feedback approaches

There have been significant advances in health care over the last decade, and patients now receive treatments that were unlikely in the past. However, these significant strides in therapeutic developments have not been matched by a corresponding reduction in iatrogenic harm. Some positive steps have been made: for example, patient safety has gained global importance and is a key program of the World Health Organization (WHO) (World Health Organization 2002). This chapter described the rationale and approaches to using incident reporting systems as learning tools to provide feedback to organizations to mitigate the risk of error. Feedback to individuals is covered elsewhere in Chapter 18. At the end of this chapter, there is an expert commentary about the potential value of applying this approach internationally.