Renewed call for healthcare providers in the UAE to closely monitor their ‘near misses'

Dubai, UAE: There are increasing calls from patient safety experts and healthcare accreditation organisations in the UAE to include ‘near misses’ as fundamental elements of reporting systems, to stimulate organisational learning and enhance performance.  Near misses are instances where adverse events, which are defined as actions or the omission of actions that arise during clinical care, and cause physical or psychological injury to a patient. This can have a great effect on patients as it is directly linked to the quality of care they receive and the healthcare providers’ ability to pre-empt complications before they occur.

According to Ms Maya Mallat Yassine, Corporate Senior Risk Management & Patient Safety Officer, Abu Dhabi Health Services  (SEHA), Abu Dhabi, UAE “Studying near misses allows healthcare organizations to identify and understand new problems that would not have otherwise been detected, and unveil the factors that contributed to them and how they may be prevented before harm is inflicted. In this context, the reporting of near misses offers a rich source of information to promote organisational learning initiatives.”

Ms Yassine will discuss the reporting and monitoring of near misses in the healthcare setting at the Patient Safety Middle East Exhibition & Conferences on the 4-6 October 2015 in Dubai, UAE.

Despite the fact that healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals in the UAE have a mandatory duty to report medical errors, this is still not a routine process in the UAE and the region. Factors including fear of repercussion from multiple perspectives (potential loss of employment, fear of reprisal and malpractice litigation, fear of losing license to practice) act as major detriments to the reporting of errors.

“Active error management requires accurate and timely information about adverse events and near misses, and the lack of data on the occurrence of errors is one of the greatest impediments to error-reduction efforts in healthcare. Continuous efforts should therefore be made to support and encourage the reporting of errors in a fair and transparent environment, as error reporting continues to be an important means to identify and analyse failures, and design interventions to reduce risks to future patients,” says Ms Yassine.