Incident reporting system
Patient Safety
Definition. An incident reporting system is a mechanism through which staff, and sometimes patients, report adverse events, near misses and unsafe conditions for analysis and learning.
Explanation
Reporting systems are a core component of risk identification in health care (Simsekler et al., 2018). They depend on culture: underreporting is common when staff fear blame or see no feedback. Artificial intelligence is now being applied to analyse free-text reports and detect patterns (Ferrara et al., 2024).
Reports alone do not measure harm rates; they are best used for learning and combined with other sources such as trigger tools and audits.
Related concepts
Near miss Just culture Patient safety culture Global Trigger Tool Root cause analysis (RCA)
Read on The Health Topics
- Systems-Based Risk Identification for Patient Safety
- AI in Healthcare: Enhancing Patient Safety Through Risk Management
References
Ferrara, M., Bertozzi, G., Di Fazio, N., Aquila, I., Di Fazio, A., Maiese, A., Volonnino, G., Frati, P., & La Russa, R. (2024). Risk management and patient safety in the artificial intelligence era: A systematic review. Healthcare, 12 (5), 549. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare12050549
Simsekler, M. C. E., Ward, J. R., & Clarkson, P. J. (2018). Design for patient safety: a systems-based risk identification framework. Ergonomics, 61 (8), 1046–1064. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2018.1437224
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Incident reporting system. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/incident-reporting-system/
Articles that discuss this concept
2 articles on The Health Topics mention this concept. Most relevant first.