Design and implementation of a patient safety program for a hospital emergency department: how to do it a patient safety culture

This paper describes the design of a patient safety program for the emergency department of a highly complex tertiary care university hospital. The program comprises a broad set of preventive measures for reducing the risk of identified adverse events. An expert working group within the emergency department undertook the following steps to create the program: 1) brainstorming to identify the potential adverse events that occur in the emergency department as well as the errors and contributing factors responsible for them, 2) ranking of the adverse events according to a risk priority index by means of failure mode and effect analysis, 3) listing recommendations for risk reduction, and 4) mapping risks onto the overall emergency care process. The working group identified 43 adverse events, 65 types of error, 86 causes, and 207 ameliorating actions. Each adverse event generated between 1 and 21 ameliorating actions. Problems with the clinical care process accounted for 46.51% of the total, medication incidents for 13.95%, the diagnostic process for 6.97%, procedures for 6.97%, and infections for 2.32%. Other types of incidents accounted for 23.26% of the total. Our experience underlines the importance of creating a patient safety culture in an emergency department. Such a culture can be created by first analyzing and ranking adverse events according to level of risk and then planning ameliorating actions that reduce risk.