Patient Safety Incidents, April 2010 – September 2010

Incidents are recorded on the NPSA’s Reporting and Learning System (RLS).  The RLS captures incident reports from NHS organisations across England and Wales.

A breakdown of figures for each organisation is available on the NPSA website.

Reporting is based on incidents which occurred in the six month period 1 April 2010 to 30 September 2010 (and which were reported to the NPSA by 30 November 2010). In Wales there were 29,376 incidents occurring in this period, a decrease of two per cent over the previous six months.

Reports indicate whether incidents led to any harm to the patients. Of the 29,376 incidents in Wales, 70 per cent (20,425) were reported as no harm, 22 per cent (6,568) as low harm, 8 per cent (2,246) as moderate harm and 0.5 per cent (137) resulted in death or severe harm.

Across Wales the most common types of incident were patient accidents (38 per cent); access, admission, transfer and discharge (9 per cent); treatment or procedure (8 per cent).

The reports are accompanied by Data Handling notes which include important information on interpretation of the data.

Further information

National Patient Survey Agency website: Organisation patient safety incident records

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5080
E-mail: stats.healthinfo@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

September 2011 (provisional - to be confirmed on Due Out Soon page)