Events related to patient care at the Hospital Militar Escuela “Dr. Alejandro Dávila Bolaños” of Nicaragua

Abstract

The safety of health care provided to the user is a fundamental dimension of quality. Adverse events can serve as an indicator to verify whether the improvement actions carried out by a hospital are effectively translating into results in the quality of the services received by the user. The objective of the study was to describe the events related to patient care reported at the Hospital Militar escuela “Dr. Alejandro Dávila Bolaños” in the period from January 2021 to December 2022. A descriptive observational study was conducted. The research had a quantitative and descriptive approach. The data used were from secondary sources, obtained from the records of the hospital’s quality department. Those reports containing incomplete information were excluded. A total of 1,883 notifications reported during 2021-2022 were analyzed and 191 reports with incomplete data were excluded. The main results show that the annual frequency of notifications increased from 291 notifications in 2021 to 1592 notifications in 2022. Hospitalization areas were the sites of highest occurrence with 57.6%. The highest frequency of adverse events was observed in patients older than 45 years, with 42%. 65.5% of reported events were potential events, 34.3% adverse events and 0.2% sentinel events. Seventy-five percent of the events occurred from Monday to Friday and 25% on weekends. In the three departments Maternal-Child, Clinical and Surgical, 87% of adverse events were reported. The unit dose service personnel reported the most, with 48% of the notifications. The medication category accounted for 68.1% of the reports. The study identified areas of higher concentration of reported events, which could be prioritized to develop improvement plans and future research.