GP.27.Anonymous web-based error reporting and learning system for general practice
Anonymous Web-based Error Reporting (Germany)
An online reporting and learning system for general practices entitled “Any incident counts” (Jeder Fehler zählt).
Best practice features of this project, are:
- Focus on general practitioners and general practice nurses/feldschers
- Communication across borders of national health systems in German language
- Low threshold online reporting on a voluntary basis of near misses and avoidable adverse events
- Use of a colloquial and primary care-relevant definition of medical errors which was developed by the Linnaeus Collaboration, an international primary care research group: Errors are events in your practice that made you conclude, “That was a threat to patient well-being and should not have happened. I don’t want it to happen again.”
- Anonymous reporting, if necessary reports are edited by the operator to comply with data protection standards
- Incident reporting is linked to a proposal function (“how could this have been avoided?”) and the analysis of contributing factors
- Open online access to selected “incident of the week” and “incident of the month” (since 2004)
- Open discussion forum, comments are shown anonymously, by name or nickname
- Open access to all reports via an online-database (since 2006) with search functions for the type of incident, diagnosis, medication involved and severity of outcome, and
- Proactive dissemination of weekly, monthly reports in medical gazettes widely read by general practitioners and feldschers
From 2007, registered users* may join a closed user group (incident circle, “Lernzirkel”) where incidents can be reported and analyzed confidentially and prevention strategies developed jointly with other participants. Discussion shall be facilitated by a research fellow of the institute. At the beginning, participation is restricted to general practices who have completed the European Practice Assessment.
For more information:
For further contact:
- Dr. med. Barbara Hoffmann, MPH, und
Prof. Dr. med. Ferdinand Gerlach
Institut für Allgemeinmedizin
Theodor-Stern-Kai 7
60596 Frankfurt, Deutschland
Tel: +49-69-6301-7152/5687
e-mail: hoffmann@allgemeinmedizin.uni-frankfurt.de
See also (German only):
