Factors Affecting the Degree of Harm Patient Safety Incidents in General Hospitals during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The objective of this research was to identify the characteristics of patient safety incidents in general hospitals and factors affecting the degree of harm during the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby providing basic data to reduce patient safety incidents and improve the quality of medical care. Patient safety reporting data released by the Korea Institute for Healthcare Accreditation was utilized in this study, including a total of 19,217 cases during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. The difference in the degree of harm from patient safety incidents according to general characteristics was cross-analyzed using χ2. A multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the factors affecting the degree of risk from patient safety Incidents. Regarding patient safety incidents in general hospitals, there were significant differences in the occurrence of near errors, hazardous events, and red flag events depending on gender, age, size of hospital bed, location of incidents occurrence, incidents reporter, and incidents type. Based on these findings, it is suggested that in an 'international public health emergency' such as COVID-19, it is necessary to redeploy personnel in charge of patient safety at the national level, distribute manuals, and prepare a feedback system through the analysis of the status of frequent errors by region and healthcare institutions.