Blackbox error management: how do practices deal with critical incidents in everyday practice? A qualitative interview study

BACKGROUND: Error management plays a key role in patient safety. It is a systematic approach aimed at identifying and learning from critical incidents by reporting, documenting and analyzing them. Almost nothing is known about the incidents physicians in outpatient care consider to be critical and how they deal with them. We carried out an interview study to explore outpatient physicians’ views on error management, discover what they regard as critical incidents, and find out how error management is put into practice in ambulatory care. METHODS: We conducted 72 semi-structured interviews with physicians from ambulatory practices. We asked participants what they considered to be a critical incident, how they reacted following an incident, how they discussed incidents with their coworkers, and whether they used critical incident reporting systems. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Interviewed physicians defined the term “critical incident” differently. Most participants reported that they recorded information on incidents and discussed them in their teams. Several physicians reported taking a ‘pay better attention next time-approach’ to the analysis of incidents. Systematic error management involving incident documentation, analysis, preventive measure development, and follow-up, was the exception. CONCLUSIONS: To promote error management, medical training should include teaching on the topic, so that medical professionals can learn about critical incidents and how to deal with them in an open and structured manner. This would help establish the culture of safety that has long been called for internationally. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12875-023-02206-2.