“Fear of reprisals and loss of reputation” stops GPs reporting medical errors

The reporting of medical errors in primary care must be improved, a conference on patient safety heard.

Bruce Warner, head of primary care at the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), told the Patient Safety Congress in Birmingham that despite an increase in incident reporting less than 1% of the total number of reports made to the agency came from general practice.

Dr Warner said that one in 15 hospital admissions is drug related and preventable, and 11% of all prescriptions contain an error. Barriers to reporting by GPs might be “fear of reprisals, lack …