Objective: To assess the reporting of critical incidents by anaesthetic trainees using personal digital assistants. The project also identified the reporting of 'near miss' incidents by anaesthetic trainees.
Design: Comparison of electronic incident reporting with retrospective case note review of cases in which no incident was reported.
Setting: A 400-bed university teaching hospital in Victoria.
Participants: Fourteen accredited Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) registrars and their training supervisors.
Interventions: Registrars and supervisors underwent initial training for 1 hour and were provided with ongoing support. The cases and incidents reported to the database using the portable digital assistants were analysed.
Main outcome measures: These were the total number of anaesthetics reported to the database; the number of incidents reported to the database; the outcome severity of incidents reported; and the number of incidents detected in the case note review that were not reported to the database.
Results: An incident was reported for 156 (3.5%) of 4441 anaesthetic procedures reported to the database. Of these incidents, 72 (46.2%) were 'near misses'. One incident was identified in a review of 208 case notes, which had no incidents reported electronically, and was not reported to the database electronically. This gives a reporting rate of 99.52% [95% confidence interval (CI) 96.9-100%].
Conclusions: ANZCA trainees in routine anaesthetic practice can reliably use mobile computing technology to report critical incidents and 'near miss' incident data.