Introduction:

Patient safety includes monitoring, analysis, and proposed actions for the prevention of reportable events with unwanted effects (REUE).

Objective:

To estimate the incidence, preventability, severity, and contributing factors of REUEs in patients admitted to the surgery service.

Materials and methods:

Prospective cohort study in patients with at least 12hours of hospitalization in the surgical services of a university hospital in Bogotá, Colombia. Random sampling was used and the sample size was 200 subjects. Sociodemographic and baseline clinical variables were evaluated. We estimated the presence of REUE detection events, their preventability and severity. The analysis of the contributing factors was done using the London protocol.

Results:

A total of 106 women (52.47%) and 96 men (47.53%) were included; the median age was 51.93 years (range 18-93); 60% had at least 1 comorbidity measured by the Charlson index and 25.74% had 3 or more. Of the participants, 28.21% presented at least 1 detection event, the incidence of REUEs was 11.8%, and 75% of them were classified as preventable while 75% were serious events. The main contributing factors were: patient-related 58.33%, related to scheduled tasks and clinical context 50.00%, and work team-related factors 37.50%.

Conclusion:

The incidence, preventability, and severity of REUE are similar to those reported in the literature. The analysis of the contributing factors shows areas that are susceptible to intervention and can be considered as opportunities for improvement.

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