Datix denial: when safety incidents are reported in your workplace, is anyone listening?
Nurses say the safety incident reporting system Datix is widely misused by senior managers who prefer either to ignore or downplay safety concerns than act on and learn from them. Datix will work effectively where the organisation is prepared to act on a safety concern and promotes reflective practice to discover what can be learned from the incident. Where the organisational culture makes healthcare professionals scapegoats and their expertise is not valued, Datix reporting will not be useful.
Nurses say Datix incident reporting is misused by managers who prefer to ignore or downplay safety concerns than act on and learn from them
Nursing is a safety-critical profession with a learning culture – that’s what you always hear.
But are nurses truly enabled to practise these principles? Or are they merely espoused by NHS managers, leaders and politicians when it suits their narrative or agenda?
Our latest investigation into Datix, the system used to report patient safety incidents in the NHS, reveals the reality and struggle of nursing staff who flag these important issues. Many say their reports of genuine safety issues are ignored or downgraded by those reviewing them.
The nurses who spoke to us said reports were not investigated by senior management due to a lack of time or excessive paperwork – or because doing so would expose staffing issues such as senior nurses being left in charge of wards for long periods without doctor cover.
There is also the sense of Datix being seen as a punishment, something that is ‘done’ to an individual, rather than used as a learning experience to improve care.
NHS organisational cultures: openness to learning and reflection versus culture of cover-up
All of these issues come back to the culture of an organisation – whether it is one where the incident reporting process is simplified and crucially, lessons are learned, or where staff are either used as scapegoats or their experience or expertise dismissed. Where Datix works, it is where staff report an incident, it is acted on and used for reflective practice and development.
A paramedic who reported their own near miss experience that could have caused patient harm shared on X the positive feedback received for their ‘ownership’ of the incident. Their response, accountability and learning was seen as ‘exemplary’ by the pharmacist reviewing the Datix report.
.import-social-media .twitter-tweet {margin:15px auto;}To some this might seem like an ideal-world scenario or response but this is what a safety-critical organisation with a just learning culture should look like. As nurses in our investigation attest, more need to adopt this approach.
