Your safety in hospital

Abstract

Background Patient injuries can be divided into preventable and not preventable injuries. Injuries that are possible to prevent are called adverse events. Approximately ten percent of patients in hospital have had an adverse event. Sahlgrenska University Hospital (SU) has created a patient safety advisory that describes how patients themselves can contribute to decrease the risk for adverse events. SU utilizes the data system Melior Cognos to extract statistics of registered patient safety work and injuries. Reports from Melior Cognos will be used when evaluating the patient safety advisory effect on the incidence of adverse events. Aim To investigate the reliability of the data system Melior Cognos with manual medical record reviews and to evaluate patient safety advisory´s effect on falls, pressure ulcers and malnutrition. Method Medical record reviews were executed on 188 patients and the result from the review was compared to extracted journal data from Melior Cognos. The incidence of falls, pressure ulcers and malnutrition was compared between patients that received a) oral information about patient safety (control group) and b) oral and written information about patient safety (intervention group). Result The investigation of Melior Cognos reliability demonstrated a 99.6 percent consistency with the medical record review. The majority of patients did not get a risk assessment for fall, pressure ulclus or malnutrition. A higher proportion of the patients in the intervention group fell during the hospital stay. No patient got a pressure ulcus. Patients weight is not measured on regular basis at discharge and the amount of patients that suffered malnutrition could not be determined. Conclusion Journal extractions from Melior Cognos were reliable and can be used to acquire information about the patient safety work and injuries when evaluating the patient safety advisory. The fact that fall risk assessment were missing for the majority of the patients in the study makes it difficult to draw any conclusions about the patient safety advisatory, where further research is warranted.