A balanced approach to using organizational patient safety incident data for research

Reported patient safety incidents offer high-value perspectives on safety threats but can be an untapped source of learning due to their sensitive nature and the presence of potential data protected under Quality Assurance (QA) legislations. There are no published guidelines for leaders to enable ethical use of data protected under QA legislation in reported patient safety incidents within the Canadian context. Liberating this data requires understanding the appropriate purposes for use, which draws on ethical and privacy-related considerations. We describe the approach followed to balance the duty to protect relevant privacy interests with the moral obligation to conduct research, and the proactive prevention of patient harm at our Canadian multi-site academic health sciences centre. Overall, we developed guidelines and discovered leaders must commit to establishing connections between organizational governance, legal structures, and privacy experts to support research enabling learning from patient safety incidents.