What are patient safety incidents?

An “incident” is defined as any type of patient safety event, error, accident or deviation from the norm that either:

actually happened – represented by CPiRLS-4S as a red traffic light
e.g. Patient fell from a treatment table

nearly happened (‘near miss’) – represented by CPiRLS-4S as an amber traffic light
e.g. Patient nearly fell from a treatment table, but this was avoided

has the potential to happen – represented by CPiRLS-4S as a green traffic light
e.g. Potential for patient to fall from the table noticed and action taken to reduce/remove risk

regardless of whether it is considered minor or major, results in significant patient harm or leads to a patient complaint.

A ‘trigger list’ has been designed to help you participate in CPiRLS-4S by providing examples of incidents that you might come across and should report. Some may be fairly common and some extremely rare, and the list is not exhaustive. The list provides categories/sub-categories of incident that match those provided in the electronic reporting form.

The trigger list can be accessed from the main menu item, ‘What should I report?’ once you have logged in to this website.