Incident reporting and harmful safety events during the COVID-19 pandemic in a children's hospital.

backgroundDuring the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, pediatric providers cared for both pediatric and adult patients. Our objective was to assess and compare the incident reports and safety events that occurred in our children's hospital prior and during the COVID-19 pandemic and to evaluate if the rate of reported harmful safety events increased when pediatricians cared for adult patients.

methodsThis was a retrospective study comparing incident reports and safety events between two time periods, March 1, 2019 to Feb 29, 2020 (pre-pandemic) and March 1, 2020 to Feb 28, 2021 (during-pandemic). Safety events were classified based on outcome and level of harm using standard national definitions.

results1,813 incident reports were reviewed. 632 safety events occurred pre-pandemic and 575 safety events occurred during-pandemic. Incidents regarding isolation integrity and infection control were reported more often during the pandemic period (3% vs. 0.9%, p = 0.03). The inpatient safety event rate (ISER) increased from 1.41 safety events/100 patient days pre-pandemic to 1.72 safety events/100 patient days during-pandemic (p = 0.002). There was no significant difference in the rate of reported harmful safety events between the two time periods (0.36 events/100 patient days vs. 0.39 events/100 patient days).

conclusionA resilient safety infrastructure is essential during a pandemic when risk for medical error is high and patient safety is potentially vulnerable. This study showed no increase in the rate of harmful safety events during the pandemic at our children's hospital. Despite the limitations of voluntary incident reporting systems (IRS), they provide crucial information on how we can improve patient safety and ultimately decrease harm.