Patient safety rounds in a pediatric tertiary care center

Background: Patient safety rounds were implemented in a pediatric tertiary care setting. Completed patient safety issues from three years of pediatric patient safety rounds and nine months of pediatric surgical safety rounds were analyzed. Completed issues were categorized into both Modified Vincent and University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) categorization schemes to compare and contrast their attributes. Findings: From January 2003 through January 2006, there were 159 completed patient safety issues, 148 (93%) from general pediatric safety rounds and 11 (7%) from pediatric surgical safety rounds. Using the UHC classification scheme, 35.8% of the issues were classified as care coordination/records, 27.0% as equipment safety situation/preventive maintenance, 21.4% as equipment/supplies/devices, 3.8% as error related to procedure/treatment/test, and 3.8% as medication error. In the Modified Vincent classification scheme, 63.5% of the issues were classified as environmental factors, 23.3% as team factors, 6.9% as individual factors, 3.1% as task factors, and 1.9% as patient characteristics. Pediatric safety rounds were well received by both frontline staff and senior executives. Discussion: The use of pediatric safety rounds is a low-cost intervention that helps to partner senior leaders and frontline staff on patient safety and is an effective tool for improving patient safety in a pediatric setting.