Risk Management Plan: Roles, Incidents, and Reporting in Healthcare

This report outlines a comprehensive risk management plan tailored for healthcare environments. It begins by defining risk management and its importance in ensuring a safe environment for staff, patients, and visitors. The report details the risk management process, including establishing context, identifying risks, analyzing probabilities, evaluating severity, and treating risks. It then clarifies the responsibilities of staff at different levels, from subordinate staff to management, in identifying, documenting, and managing risks. The report also addresses incident management, defining different types of incidents such as adverse events, near misses, and sentinel events, and outlines the reporting and management procedures. It emphasizes the importance of prompt reporting and appropriate responses, including reviewing incidents, providing support, and ensuring patient care. Finally, it highlights common incidents that clinical, nurses, and OH&S staff should be vigilant about, reinforcing the critical role of risk management in healthcare to prevent errors and maintain quality patient care. The report concludes by emphasizing the integral role of a risk management plan in any health facility.

Risk Management Plan 1
Risk Management Plan
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course Title
Date

Risk Management Plan 2
Risk Management Plan
Risk management is the culture, procedure and structure that organization use to
maintain risks while at the same time realizing any hidden opportunities (AS/NZ 4360:2004).
The goal of risk management in the nursing work environment is to ensure that there is a safe
environment for all the staff, patients and visitors. This paper will discuss how an
organization can detect risks in the work place, the responsibilities of staff in the face of any
risk or crisis, and how the identified risk can be managed.
Risk Management process
To effectively manage risks, a few steps have been proposed. These steps are
illustrated below (Tomey 2009).
.

Risk Management Plan 3
Table 1: Risk management process
From Table 1, it is important to notice that Communication and feedback and
Monitoring and reviewing happen at each stage of the risk management process. The first
step is to establish a context under which a risk might occur, then identify the probable risk
analyse the risk to know its probability of happening, Evaluate the risk to determine if it is
about or if it has happened and lastly treating the risk.
Responsibilities of staff towards risk management
It is important that all people working in the health centre are actively involved in the
management risk process. The following are their responsibilities toward risk management
(Johnstone 2007).
Subordinate staff:
Generally the staff will be responsible for
I. Identifying and assessing risk in line with the management policies and
procedures
II. Documenting any information about the risk, and
III. Including the risk management process illustrated above in their daily work.
Management:
Line managers in a health facility will have the following responsibilities towards
mitigating and managing risks
I. Reviewing and updating the risk profile of the health facility

Risk Management Plan 4
II. Making sure that risks are identified, managed and monitored in real time
under their departments. They should ensure that the above process has been followed in
mitigating the risk,
III. Supervising the risk management process to ensure that the risk management
techniques are coherently and consistently used by those people reporting the risks,
IV. Ensuring that risk management is made a regular agenda for most team
meetings,
V. Ensuring the junior staff accurately and promptly document risks. This will
make it easier to report risk management
The management should ensure that risk management is embedded in the day to day
running of the health facility.
Dealing with Incidents
Incidents are the most common risks that can be found within a health facility setting.
According to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare ACSQHC,
(2006), an incident is an event or circumstance that might lead or that lead to unintended or
unnecessary harm to a patient. Incidents can be grouped into adverse events, Near misses,
sentinel events and hazards.
An adverse event is an incident in which a patient is harmed, a near miss is an
incident that has the potential of causing harm to the patient but did not due to certain factors
such as intervention, chance or luck, and sentinel events are those events which are
independent of the patient’s condition. These can happen due to poor processes in the
hospital setting that might lead to unintended outcomes (ACQHC, 2006).
1. Reporting

Risk Management Plan 5
When any staff working in the health centre (either Clinical, OH&S and non-clinical)
identifies an event, the first step should be trying to maintain the situation while at the same
time calling the management to report the incident (Kingstone et al, 2004). The incident
should be reported by entering its details to the provided incident reporting system as soon as
it is practical to do so. The staff should also inform their line manager about the incident or
hazard.
2. Managing the incident
Once the incident report has been submitted, it will be forwarded to the manager
nominated by the person reporting the incident. They can be Heads of Departments or
Nursing Units managers. The managers will then ensure that the following have been done
(Kingstone et al, 2004)
I. That the incident has been reviewed in not more than three working days after
submission (will depend on the type of incident and severity of the incident).
II. Where support is required, provide it. The manager will tell if there is any
need for support by debriefing the staff involved in the incident and asking for clarifications.
III. Where the incident involves a patient, ensure that the patients’ family is
informed of the incident and appropriate treatment given. Where support is required, they
should provide it.
IV. Finally the manager should make sure that the risk was recorded under the
correct department and appropriate measures taken.
3. Common incidents that Clinical, Nurses. OH &S should always look out
for

Risk Management Plan 6
The following are the most common incidents. These incidents can easily translate to
risk and it is important that the staff always looks out for them.
I. Wrong dosage given to a patient,
II. Patients skipping dosages
III. A patient receiving the wrong treatment. An example would be where the
correct procedure was not followed
IV. Injury to any person in the health facility
V. Poor functioning machines.
VI. Intravascular gas embolism that results to a serious damage to the neurology
or even death
VII. ABO incompatibility making a blood transfusion to become Haemolytic
VIII. After an operation, surgical materials are retained calling the need for a
reoperation
Risk Management is an integral part of any health facility. Without a risk
management plan, the health centre might lose direction or open itself to more risks and
threats once an unforeseen circumstance hits it.

Risk Management Plan 7
References
Australian Commission On Quality And Quality in Health Care, (2006). Retrieved on 30th
September 2017 , <https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au>
Australian New Zealand Risk Management Standards 4360 (2004). Retrieved on 30th
September 2017 <http://det.wa.edu.au/policies/detcms/policy-planning-and-
accountability/policies-framework/web-references/australian-new-zealand-risk-
management-standard-as-nzs-43602004and-risk-management-guidelines-hb-
4362004.en>
Johnstone, M. J., & Kanitsaki, O. (2007). Clinical risk management and patient safety
education for nurses: a critique. Nurse education today, 27(3), 185-191.
Kingston, M. J., Evans, S. M., Smith, B. J., & Berry, J. G. (2004). Attitudes of doctors and
nurses towards incident reporting: a qualitative analysis. Medical Journal of
Australia, 181(1), 36-39.
Tomey, A. M. (2009). Nursing management and leadership. Elsevier, Missouri.