INTRODUCTION:
Welcome to CIRS©, the critical incident reporting system of the Swiss Anaesthesia Server, run by the Department of Anaesthesia, University of Basel, Switzerland.
Based on the experiences from the Australian-Incident-Monitoring-Study (Runciman et al.1; AIMS) we would like to create an international forum where we collect and distribute critical incidents that happened in daily anaesthetic practice. This program not only allows the submission of critical incidents that happened at your place but also serves as a teaching instrument: share your experiences with us and have a look at the experiences of others by browsing through the cases. CIRS© is anonymous.
PURPOSE:
CIRS is primarily thought to be a collection of anecdotal cases since anaesthesiology is still a clinical discipline. But as you go through the electronic questionaire you soon will realize, that compilations of the data are feasible. Therefore we tried to be in parts very close to the AIMS format. Summation of results on the other hand will strongly depend on the numbers of cases submitted and on the quality of the information given by the reporter.
DEFINITION:
Defining critical incidents unfortunately is not straight foreward. Nevertheless we want to invite you to report your critical incidents if they match with this definition:
An event under anaesthetic care which had the potential to lead to an undesireable outcome if left to progress.Please also consider any team performance critical incidents, regardless of how minimal they seem.
FORMAT:
When you submit a case then the system offers you check-boxes, scrolling-lists and free-text passages. Please try to fill in appropriate and complete all sections so that your data will be more valuable
. Especially important is the section 'description of the incident' and 'management', where you are asked to report in your own words. This not only helps us to validate the data-entry but also serves as the only information of the incident that automatically enters the section 'review of the reported incidents'.If a combination of incidents happened please report each incident on a separate form. In order to initiate a discussion about the individual cases we created a forum, where you can read comments to each case as well as submitt your own comments. This also allows a question back to the initial reporter, provided that he or she takes part on this individual case discussion.
ANONYMITY:
We guarantee you the maximal possible degree of anonymity.
During your posting of a case there will be NO questions that would allow an identification of the reporter, the patient or the institution. Furthermore we will NOT save any technical data on the individual reports: no E-mail address and no IP-number (a number that accompanies each submitted document on the net). So no unauthorized 'visitor' will find any information that would allow an identification of you or your patient or your institution (not even on our local network-computers) by browsing through the cases. Furthermore we want to enforce our intention to discuss critical incidents and not necessarily complications in anaesthetic practice. This also should make you feel more comfortable, sharing your experience with others.
If you still feel uncertain about the medico-legal implications of a case we advise you, NOT to report.
BUT: please keep in mind, that this is an international forum. These incidents could have happened all over the world. But there does not exist a firewall as exists for example in local financial nets and we can not take the responsibility for the content of the submitted cases.
If you have any questions or suggestions concerning CIRS© please contact me via E-mail: Staender@ubaclu.unibas.ch
Thank you for your visit and the trust in our system.
Sven Staender, MD
1. Runciman WB, Sellen A, Webb RK, Williamson JA, Currie M, Morgan C, et al. The australian incident monitoring study. Errors, incidents and accidents in anaesthetic practice. Anaesth Intensive Care 1993; 21:506-519