For both units, the prospective and retrospective analyses resulted in divergent overviews of risks in terms of nature and magnitude, which suggests that one or both methods were subject to biases. Findings from the evaluation forms showed that both methods were perceived as useful and that triangulation provided additional insight into risks. Due to the convergent evidence, triangulation of prospective and retrospective methods can provide hospital management and frontline staff with a more complete and less biased picture of risks. An integrative approach might be advantageous in terms of efficiency of analysis, setting priorities for patient safety and improving the methods themselves.

No abstract

From this study, it can be concluded that actual accidents can be used as an alternative data source to near misses for the analysis and understanding of error recovery. By using both sources, hospitals can enhance their resilience by reinforcing the positive influences on error recovery as well as reducing the negative ones. Together with traditional error reduction methodologies, which only concentrate on eliminating failure factors, hospitals thus have numerous opportunities to improve patient safety.

No abstract