An assessment of factors influencing patient safety incident reporting in the inpatient department at the Gertrude’s children Hospital in Nairobi,Kenya

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to establish the factors influencing the reporting Patient safety incidents at Gertrude’s Children hospital. The study employed a Descriptive mixed method with both quantitative and qualitative study design. Fifty Two nurses from the inpatient units participated in this study. A standard checklist Extracted from Q-pulse, a structured questionnaire and in-depth interviews guides were used for data collection. Statistical package of social sciences(SPSS)version 21.0 and the matic analysis was used to analyze the data. Eighty nine percent of the Nurses were aware of the hospital’s reporting system but about half of the nurses Rarely reported incidents. There was a significant low rate of reporting patient safety incidents among the nurses in the inpatient units of the hospital. The main challenges faced by staff on reporting patient safety incident were issues with accessibility of reporting platform, lack of time to report, fear of victimization, fear of unknown,lack of knowledge of what to report,and fear of intimidating colleagues.Some of the key recommendations includes; Provision of management support for patient safety culture,train all health care workers on the incident reporting process, ensure a non-punitive system when handling reported incidents and in all ways discourage victimization of staff reporting patient safety incidents and provision of appropriate timely feedback to staff on corrective measures.