Patient Safety and Quality Control Quiz

See Harm. Option A is correct. An adverse event is an injury caused by medical management, not by the underlying disease, that leads to prolonged hospital stay, disability or both. Never Events are a specific subset of patient safety incidents on the NHS Never Events list. They are considered wholly preventable because national guidance or safety recommendations provide strong systemic protective barriers (reliable safeguards, such as pre-operative checks) that every provider should have put in place. Operating on the wrong patient or the wrong site is an example, and so is leaving a swab or other object inside a patient. Classification depends on the criteria for the listed incident, not simply on how badly the patient was hurt, so actual serious harm is not required. If a method came about to reliably predict a harm such as a first-time drug allergy, it would be reclassified as a preventable adverse event, but even then it would not be a Never Event unless it was on the list. A memory aid is that a Never Event is one that should never happen if the safeguards are working.

• Adverse event: An injury caused by medical management, not by the underlying disease, that leads to prolonged hospital stay, disability or both.
• Never Events: A specific subset of patient safety incidents on the NHS Never Events list, considered wholly preventable because strong systemic protective barriers should be in place.
• Examples: Operating on the wrong patient or the wrong site, or leaving a swab or other object inside a patient.
• Classification: Depends on the criteria for the listed incident, not on how badly the patient was hurt.