All Entries in the "Nursing documentation" Category

Best practices for filling out incident reports

Incidents reports are a pain to fill out, but vital for documenting what happened and protecting yourself and your staff. This week, Patricia A. Duclos-Miller, MS, RN, CNA, BC, provides some best practices.

You and your staff may think that incident reports are more trouble than they are worth-but think again.

We work in high-stress, fast-paced environments. It is your responsibility as a member of the nursing management team to understand not only the importance of the incident report, but also how to ensure that your staff completes them and how to investigate incidents to avoid any further occurrences. Your investigation will also provide possible defense if during your investigation you identify a system failure and take the necessary corrective action(s).

The purpose of the incident report is to refresh the memories of both the nurse manager/supervisor and the staff nurse. While the clinical record is patient-focused, the incident report is incident-focused. The benefit to you and your staff is that years after the event, the incident report will help you and the persons involved remember what happened. [more]