Description of the characteristics of the clinical incidents reported in 2020 to the voluntary reporting system of a pediatric hospital in Costa Rica.

Abstract

The objective of this manuscript was to describe the clinical incidents that were sent to the voluntary reporting system during 2020 at the National Children's Hospital of Costa Rica, belonging to the Costa Rican Social Security Fund. A descriptive observational study of the consolidated data that was sent during the months of January to December of the year 2020 was carried out. During 2020, 1.6% of the patients treated in the hospital experienced some type of clinical incident. The total discharges decreased by 38.4% compared to the discharges of the year 2019, however, the reported clinical incidents increased in the year 2020 by 37.6%, especially from the month of August. Sentinel events were not reported this year. The services that made the highest number of reports were Intensive Care (14.3%), General Surgery (12%), Neonatology (9.8%) and Infectiology (9%). The day on which the most incidents were reported was Wednesday (27.8%), in the first hospital shift most of the cases were reported (48.1%) and these incidents occurred predominantly to male individuals (66%). Regarding the age of the patients, the majority were in the age range from 1 year to less than 5 years (36.1%), followed by the age range from over 29 days to under 1 year (24, 1%). Most of the cases were related to the care provided to the patient (63.9%). 41.4% of the incidents required clinical measures but the sequelae were transitory. 51.1% of the cases merited some type of additional medical care to their therapeutic scheme upon admission. 96% of clinical incidents were reported by nursing staff. Most of the clinical incidents (35.3%) in this period were errors related to notes in the digital file.