An Introduction to Incident Management: Bitesize Learning

An adverse incident is an event that causes, or has the potential to cause, unexpected or unwanted effects.

For example:

• A resident develops a pressure injury as a result of poor mobility
• There is a widespread power loss in a care home as a result of building work happening close to the property
• A patient develops an infection as a result of poor infection control techniques
• A nurse administers the wrong medication to a service user

Incidents can vary in severity. They are usually classed as;

1. Near miss
2. Minor
3. Moderate
4. High
5. Severe
6. Catastrophic (Death)

Even if an incident does not appear to have caused any harm at the time, it may have the potential for being repeated with a much more severe outcome if not reported.

There may be many causes of these types of adverse events. It is therefore essential that there are systems in place to report incidents; and processes available to enable us to learn from such events so that the risk of them happening again can be reduced.