Adverse events arising from nursing care: phlebitis, pressure ulcers and falls

Abstract

Introduction: adverse events have great impact on patients´ health, in institutional costs and professional practice; it is necessary to know how often they occur in health institutions, especially those events related to nursing care. Objective: to describe the incidence of some adverse events related to nursing interventions in an institution of tertiary health care. Materials and methods: pilot testing of a concurrent cohort study of adverse events related to nursing care in a health institution of tertiary care in the city of Bucaramanga, Colombia. 198 patients were included who had entered the institution for emergency care, with stays between 6 to 24 hours and older than 18 years. On admission and throughout hospitalization, an instrument was applied to assess possible risk factors and occurrence of each adverse event: pressure ulcers, falls, phlebitis and withdrawal/loss of therapeutic devices. A descriptive analysis of participants was performed and the incidence of adverse events was estimated with confidence intervals of 95%. Results: the incidence of adverse events during the pilot study was 16.16% (n = 32, 95% CI = 11.32 - 22.04). Patients undergoing 65.63% of adverse events (n = 21) presented an event, 25% (n = 8) two events, and 9.38% (n = 3) three events. Among all reported adverse events the most frequent was pressure ulcers. Conclusions: we report a significant number of adverse events figures are consistent with the literature. Knowing the epidemiology will help establish measures for their prevention and control.