Senior nurses’ perceptions of junior nurses incident reporting: A qualitative study

Aim: To develop an understanding of senior nurses ranking and perceptions of incident reporting by junior nurses. Background: Nurses must be encouraged to report incidents to nursing management. It is important to ascertain how senior nurses perceive their concerns, as it is crucial to ensuring that patient safety are managed. Method: Qualitative study. Four focus groups explore d senior nurses’ perceptions of risks identified by nurses from a live incident reporting database. Data were analysed using framework analysis. Results: Five themes emerged demonstrating differences of opinions in relation to the classification of events by senior and non senior nurses. Senior nurses held the view that some junior nurses use incident reporting to ‘vent frustration.’ Conclusion: There is a mismatch between senior nurses and junior nurses’ perceptions of safety incidents. Nurses need to develop the writing style and use language that redflags incidents when reporting incidents. Senior nurses need to create a positive culture where risk from incident reporting is used to improve patient safety and subsequently a positive work environment