Adoption of Bayesian Network Model to Investigate Organizational Factors Influencing Incident Reporting Practice

Abstract

There is an increasing realization that patient safety has a significant influence on quality improvement in healthcare organizations. Patient lives can be put at high risk due to medical errors. Many organizational factors can affect the incident reporting practices in hospitals. As a multidimensional concept, patient safety is mainly measured through surveys in healthcare settings One of the most common and largest workforce surveys in the world is the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) Staff Survey, which is owned by NHS England and NHS Improvement and carried out every year to improve staff experiences across the NHS. However, there has been limited research regarding the relationships and interdependencies between the organizational factors and the incident reporting practice. To shed light on this, the author of this study collected data from the NHS Staff Survey from different hospitals over multiple years to assess the effects of several organizational factors on incident reporting practice using a data-driven Bayesian belief network (BBN) model. Multiple algorithms were tested to develop the BBN model, and the results explored the relationships between nine organizational factors and incident reporting practices. The model reveals that morale and staff engagement are the primary factors that influence the reporting of incidents in organizations. This study contributes the general understanding of the function of organizational factors and their importance in assisting decision-makers and improving safety.

Date of Award	May 2022
Original language	American English