Derivation And Validation Of A Taxonomy To Categorize Adverse Events And Near-misses In Transport Medicine

Background and aims: The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report "Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard of Care" recommends development of taxonomy for data and standardized terminology for error reporting and analysis. This study is developing a classification hierarchy (“taxonomy”) using standardized terminology to categorize information on patient care- and aviation-related causes of adverse events and near-misses and validate the taxonomy using existing data. Using a modified Delphi approach, have derived categorization methods and are currently developing a taxonomic framework with standard definitions. Once developed, focus groups and expert panels will derive the subcategories and a validation process will be carried out.

Significance: A transport medicine-specific taxonomy and definitions enables categorization of adverse events and errors in a standardized manner, and facilitate subsequent analysis. This will allow comparison amongst transport services, and between transport services and other health care and aviation settings, and will permit benchmarking. Ultimately, these efforts can help better monitor outcomes of change efforts and mitigate risk to the patient and transporting crew.