Last update:
17-Jun-2012

OBJECTIVE The detection and analysis of adverse events is crucial to the understanding of the omissions of the Health System and mapping out strategies to prevent and reduce such incidents. The objective of the Intensive Care Unit-Medical Error Reporting Information System (ICU-MERIS) is detection and recording of adverse events in the ICU, their key characteristics and the factors that contributed to their occurrence, with a view in the long term to reducing injuries in the ICU, through prevention, intervention, and simple analysis of the problems.

METHOD The ICUMERIS combines the experience of implementing the Trigger Tool for Measuring Adverse Drug Events of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) methodology, with the less extensively applied methodology of the ICU Adverse Event Trigger Tool of the VA/IHI. The methodology adopts the most widely accepted classification in major categories of adverse events of the Australian Incident Monitoring Study in Intensive Care (AIMS-ICU), in conjunction with the Critical Care Safety Study (CCSS) of the Harvard Medical Practice Study.

RESULTS The ICU-MERIS proved to be a fairly friendly, safe, efficient and reliable means of detecting and reporting adverse events in the ICU environment. The adaptation of the tools and the participation and acceptance on the part of the medical and the nursing staff in the proposed system was assessed as highly satisfactory. Still pending is a comprehensive assessment and integration of the subsystem for active participation of patients-citizens in the reporting of any adverse events.

CONCLUSIONS The methodology of the ICU-MERIS provides representative information in the ICU on adverse events, and enables the presentation of detailed, aggregated data over time, while constituting a valuable tool for comparison with the experience of other ICUs.

Key words: Adverse events, Information system, Intensive care unit, Patient safety, Quality in health care.