Management and Reporting on Adverse Events in Healthcare

Introduction

Management is the activity of coordinating tasks and activities to achieve the aims and objectives of a company or other institution. It occurs in every form of institution. Institutions have their own characteristics which affect managers and employees. Each institution has its own specificities relating to strengths and weaknesses, problems and possible solutions, so managers should get to know and understand ‘their’ institution and steer it accordingly. Management is about finding creative solutions to present problems. It is a process of learning about problems and analyzing them, identifying the causes, determining and selecting variations for appropriate solutions, planning implementations, monitoring and identifying achievements (Možina, 2002; Azad et al., 2017, Liphadzi et al., 2017). Leadership skills are required for managers to be effective (Asefzadeh, 2004). Mousavi et al. (2017) state that managers spend 80% of their time on 20% less important matters. Managers are expected to perform basic tasks effectively if they select the appropriate activity and type of consumer, make appropriate decisions and appropriately allocate their time (Mousavi et al., 2017).

Organizations (companies and other institutions) are set up to achieve specific aims and objectives of their owners and other stakeholders. The level to which these aims and objectives have been achieved affects the performance of the institution. The quality of an institution’s operations depends on how well it is managed, while the management performs the core tasks (planning, organizing, leading, and controlling). The failure of any institution to achieve its mission, vision, objectives, and targets is a serious problem. The lack of attention to the core tasks performed by the management is one of the key reasons for the failure of an institution (Mousavi et al., 2017). It is the following four tasks that allow managers to achieve their success: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (Kralj, 2005; Dolechek et al., 2019). In every institution, including every health care institution (hereinafter: HCI), managers should be responsible and accountable for the performance of business operations, primarily senior managers (Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, 2006; Kerzner, 2013; Mousavi et al., 2017).

Successful managers achieve their success through the four functions of management (Dimovski et al., 2005; Dolechek et al., 2019). In order for a reporting system to be sufficiently implemented, it is first necessary to look at the management functions and, in that context, identify the influencing factors that are related to or may affect adverse event reporting (hereafter: AEs) in a health care facility (Birk Tot, 2021).

The Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2000) report titled To Err is Human focused on the problem of errors in health care as one of the factors that significantly affect the performance of healthcare institutions. As a result, concerted efforts have been made to investigate and design error reporting systems in health care in order to collect and analyze data and to introduce safety interventions. However, if real progress is to be made concerning the effectiveness of AE reporting systems, it is necessary to begin to develop a theory for adopting and utilizing reporting systems (Karsh et al., 2006). A number of papers have noted that AE reporting has not yet taken off (Council of the EU, 2009; European Commission, 2014; Re-NPZV, 2016).