How often are Patients Harmed When They Visit the Computed Tomography Suite? A Multi-year Experience, in Incident Reporting, in a Large Academic Medical Center

Objectives: Our goal is to present our multi-year experience in incident reporting in CT in a large medical centre.

Methods: This is an IRB-approved, HIPAA-compliant study. Informed consent was waived for this study. The electronic safety incident reporting system of our hospital was searched for the variables from April 2006 to September 2012. Incident classifications were diagnostic test orders, ID/documentation, safety/security/conduct, service coordination, surgery/procedure, line/tube, fall, medication/IV safety, employee general incident, environment/equipment, adverse drug reaction, skin/tissue and diagnosis/treatment.

Results: A total of 1918 incident reports occurred in the study period and 843,902 CT examinations were performed. The rate of safety incident was 0.22 % (1918/843,902). The highest incident rates were due to adverse drug reactions (652/843,902 = 0.077 %) followed by medication/IV safety (573/843,902 = 0.068 %) and diagnostic test orders (206/843,902 = 0.024 %). Overall 45 % of incidents (869/1918) caused no harm and did not affect the patient, 33 % (637/1918) caused no harm but affected the patient, 22 % (420/1918) caused temporary or minor harm/damage and less than 1 % (10/1918) caused permanent or major harm/damage or death.

Conclusion: Our study shows a total safety incident report rate of 0.22 % in CT. The most common incidents are adverse drug reaction, medication/IV safety and diagnostic test orders.

Key points: • Total safety incident report rate in CT is 0.22 %. • Adverse drug reaction is the most common safety incident in CT. • Medication/IV safety is the second most common safety incident in CT.