Mandatory Reporting Program Aims to Improve Patient Safety Mindfulness

​A mandatory hazard and near-miss reporting system implemented in a New York nursing school is intended to increase nursing students' "patient safety mindfulness" and the likelihood that they will report adverse events throughout their nursing careers, according to an article in the December 2010 American Journal of Infection Control (Geller et al.).

Five hundred postbaccalaureate nursing students over three academic years were required to submit at least two reports of hazardous conditions or near misses each week to an electronic reporting system. Hazardous conditions were defined as settings or technologies that have the potential to cause patient harm. The reporting system required users to follow a structured format for entering event data; the students also could enter free-text comments with each report. The students were instructed to report actual adverse events through the existing...