Authors

  1. Elnitsky, Christine MSN, RN
  2. Nichols, Brenda DNSc, RN
  3. Palmer, Kay MS, RN, CRRN

Abstract

Risk management and quality improvement measures assume that staff recognize and report individual hospital incidents. A survey of nurses working in acute care hospitals in 15 localities across a south-eastern state was conducted to explore nurses' hospital incident reporting behaviors and supervisors' beliefs about and use of incident reports. Nurse managers may have reason to be concerned about this quality measure: the number of incidents documented may represent only a portion of all incidents.