Nearly two million people receive care in NSW public hospitals each year. When things go wrong, health services must respond promptly, communicate openly, and learn from what happened to reduce the risk of future harm.
Incident management provides a consistent approach to identifying, responding and learning from incidents and near misses. Effective incident management supports patients, families, carers, staff and the broader community, while supporting health services to strengthen safety culture and reduce the risk of further harm. It is a core component of a safe, person-centred and accountable health system.
This section outlines the requirements of the Incident Management Policy (PD2020_047) and provides guidance, reports and resources to support implementation across NSW Health.
Policy
The Incident Management Policy (PD2020_047) outlines the requirements for NSW Health services to identify, respond to, review and learn from incidents. The policy is underpinned by the principles of immediacy, kindness, transparency, person-centred care and a strong patient safety culture.
Staff must identify and notify incidents and near misses in the NSW Health incident management system (ims+).
Resources
Responding to a clinical incident
Manage serious clinical incidents with approved review methods, templates and learning resources.
Responding to a corporate incident
Manage serious corporate incidents with guidance, templates and learning resources.