%0 Journal Article
%T Creating European guidelines for Chiropractic Incident Reporting and Learning Systems (CIRLS): relevance and structure
%A Martin Wangler
%A Ricardo Fujikawa
%A Lise Hestb£¿k
%A Tom Michielsen
%A Timothy J Raven
%A Haymo W Thiel
%A Beatrice Zaugg
%J Chiropractic & Manual Therapies
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2045-709x-19-9
%X To introduce patient safety incident reporting within the context of chiropractic practice in Europe and to help individual countries and their national professional associations to develop or improve reporting and learning systems.Providing health care of any kind, including the provision of chiropractic treatment, can be a complex and, at times, a risky activity. Safety in healthcare cannot be guaranteed, it can only be improved. One of the most important aspects of any learning and reporting system lies in the appropriate use of the data and information it gathers. Reporting should not just be seen as a vehicle for obtaining information on patient safety issues, but also be utilised as a tool to facilitate learning, advance quality improvement and to ultimately minimise the rate of the occurrence of errors linked to patient care.Before a reporting and learning system can be established it has to be clear what the objectives of the system are, what resources will be required and whether the implementing organisation has the capacity to operate the system to its full advantage. Responding to adverse event reports requires the availability of experts to analyse the incidents and to provide feedback in a timely fashion. A comprehensive strategy for national implementation must be in place including, but not limited to, presentations at national meetings, the provision of written information to all practitioners and the running of workshops, so that all stakeholders fully understand the purposes of adverse event reporting. Unless this is achieved, any system runs the risk of failure, or at the very least, limited usefulness.Incident reporting is not new. Flannagan, a psychologist, first described the "critical incident technique" in 1954[1]. The concept originated from studies in the Aviation Psychology Program of the United States Air Force during and after the Second World War, with the aim of reducing the number of deaths of military pilots and the loss of aircraft
%U http://www.chiromt.com/content/19/1/9