Practice, perceived barriers and motivating factors to medical-incident reporting: a cross-section survey of health care providers at Mbarara regional referral hospital, southwestern Uganda

BACKGROUND: Medical-incident reporting (MIR) ensures patient safety and delivery of quality of care by minimizing unintentional harm among health care providers. We explored medical-incident reporting practices, perceived barriers and motivating factors among health care providers at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital (MRRH). METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study on 158 health provider at Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital (MRRH), Western Uganda. Data was gathered using a structured questionnaire and analyzed with SPSS. The chi-square was used to determine factors associated with MIR at MRRH. RESULTS: The results showed that there was no formal incident reporting structure. However the medical-incidences identified were: medication errors (89.9%), diagnostic errors (71.5%), surgical errors (52.5%) and preventive error (47.7%). The motivating factors of MIR were: establishment of a good communication system, instituting corrective action on the reported incidents and reinforcing health workers knowledge on MIR (p-value 0.004); presence of effective organizational systems like: written guidelines, practices of open door policy, no blame approach, and team work were significantly associated with MIR (p-value 0.000). On the other hand, perceived barriers to MIR were: lack of knowledge on incidents and their reporting, non-existence of an incident reporting team and fear of being punished (p- value 0.669). CONCLUSION: Medical Incident Reporting at MRRH was sub-optimal. Therefore setting up an incident management team and conducting routine training MIR among health care workers will increase patient safety.