Adverse events (AEs) are unintended injuries or complications that are caused by healthcare management, rather than by the patient’s underlying disease, which lead to death, disability at the time of hospital discharge, prolonged hospital stay or subsequent hospitalisation. The first Irish National Adverse Events Study (INAES) determined the prevalence and nature of AEs in acute Irish hospitals using inpatient admissions from 2009. The INAES reviewed patient charts of 1,574 admissions to eight acute Irish hospitals using an internationally standardised 2-stage methodology – trained nurses screened admissions for potential AEs using a list of trigger situations, then trained physicians reviewed triggered charts and independently identified the presence of an AE. Events were classified according to their nature, preventability, severity and patient impact. INAES found a 12.2% (95% confidence interval (CI) 9.5% – 15.5%) prevalence of AEs in Irish acute hospitals and an incidence density of 10.3 events per 100 admissions (95% CI 7.5-13.1). Over 70% of events were considered preventable and a mean of 6.1 added bed days was attributed to events, representing an expenditure of €5,550 per event. These figures represent a baseline prior to the establishment of the National Clinical Programmes (initiated collaboratively by the professional bodies and HSE in 2009/10 to improve and standardise healthcare) and before the effects of economic recession and subsequent cuts to the healthcare budget. This proposed research seeks to determine comparative rates of AEs in Irish acute hospitals pre- and post-implementation of the clinical programmes (INAES-2). INAES-2 will also be able to compare AE rates with those reported in the recently updated National Incident Management System (NIMS). A key goal of this project will be to provide the Irish healthcare sector with a data collection tool capable of being used by hospitals and frontline staff to determine local adverse event prevalence rates.
