Introduction: An adverse event is an incident induced while providing health care services or resulting from it, not related to the natural course of a given disease or health condition, which causes or is likely to cause negative consequences for the patient, including their death, a threat to life, the necessity of hospitalisation or its prolongation, permanent or considerable health detriment; or is a foetal disease, congenital defect or the result of foetal damage.
Objective: The aim of this analysis is to explore the problem of the occurrence of adverse events from the perspective of doctors and ward nurses who manage wards.
Material and methods: The research on the occurrence of adverse events among doctors and nurses (the management staff) was conducted with the use of a postal survey.
Results: It was ascertained that 86.5% of the medical personnel had taken part in an adverse event, of which 20.2% took part in an occurrence associated with pharmacotherapy, 16.2% - in an event related to diagnostics and diagnosis, or an infection - 15.7%. 14.2% of respondents were involved in an occurrence linked to a medical device malfunction, and 14.1% - in an adverse event related to an operation.
Conclusions: The adverse events most often identified in the nursing professional group are occurrences associated with pharmacotherapy, and in the doctors' professional group - occurrences related to diagnostics and diagnosis. The research established that the most frequent reason for not informing patients about the occurrence of an adverse event is fear of their filing a complaint. Medical management staff show high acceptance of an adverse event reporting system as a tool for improving patient safety.
Keywords: adverse events; patient safety; quality of health care.