Incident Reports

Goal - why is this important to us?

Dawn Farm cares about their clients and staff. This gives us an opportunity to reflect on events and make improvements as needed, as well as be informed of emergency situations that arise.

Ingredients - what do I need to get started?

An understanding of what events need to be documented on an Incident Report

A computer-Follow this link to complete

Time frame - about how long will this take?

About 5-10 minutes

When should I complete an incident report?

• Any major rules violation
• Abuse or neglect of client or allegations of such
• Suicide attempt or ideation
• Injury of staff or client
• Medication errors
• Sexual assault
• Serious illness or communicable disease
• Life threatening event
• Aggression or violence
• Use or possession of a weapon
• Wandering or elopement of client
• Vehicle accidents
• Exposure to blood or bodily fluids; exposure to bio-hazardous or chemical materials
• Possession or use of illegal substances
• All sentinel events (defined as death or serious bodily injury to a staff or client)

Contacts - who do I need to let know?

All sites →your supervisor

Evening & overnight at residential → on call staff

Spera →if supervisor unavailable, contact team lead

Steps - what do I do?

1. On-duty staff should fill out an electronic incident report in the case of any of the above situations. If in doubt as to whether something warrants an incident report, do one. Better safe than sorry.

• Your direct supervisor, the President, Clinical Director, and Project Manager will automatically receive the completed report for review and signature.

2. In some cases, clients have requested through a release that a specific person be contacted in a medical emergency. If this is the case, please contact that person and include this in your report.

3. Your supervisor and/or the Project Manager will do any necessary follow-up. In some cases recommendations may be made as to how the incident could have been avoided or handled more appropriately.

• When needed, recommendations will be communicated to staff if comments were made on the report.

When extra help is needed-

In the event that an incident requires crisis intervention services, services will be provided immediately and/or a referral for outside services will be provided. Interventions will be documented on the Incident Report.

Crisis intervention may include:

• Providing optional opportunities for processing groups and/or other debriefing support for clients and/or staff
• Contacting the Dawn Farm physician regarding medical intervention(s)
• Providing transportation to an Emergency Room for medical or psychological care
• Providing referrals to specific community resources
• Including incident-related objectives during treatment planning

Other Information

Remember, we have an entire set of Emergency Procedures and tips located on the Intranet under Policies and Procedures, then Health and Safety. Please review these, so you are prepared in an emergency!

Quarterly

The Project Manager will review all incident reports and communicate any recommendations or trends at quarterly QA meetings.

Annually

The Project manager will complete an Incident Report Summary including trends and actions for improvement, to be presented at the annual QA meeting.

Any medical emergency will be dealt with immediately (see Emergency Procedures) and then documented on an Incident Report.

CARF Requirement: 1.H.9, 10