Quarterly Data Summary Issue 2

This quarterly data summary describes trends in patient safety incident reports received between October 2003 and June 2006.

Data are from the Reporting and Learning System (RLS) and include all patient safety incidents reported from NHS organisations in England and Wales.

Between October 2003, when the RLS was launched, and June 2006, 788,188 incidents had been reported.

The pattern of incident types and severity of incidents remained broadly consistent with reports up to the end of March 2006. There was a sustained increase in incidents reported as more organisations became connected to the RLS via local risk management systems.

Analysis includes:

• reported incidents and number of reporting trusts; 
• incident reports by care setting;
• degree of harm to patients; 
• severity of incidents by care setting; and
• incident types by care setting.

The report also contains an update on the analysis presented in the first report from the Patient Safety Observatory.

(This report is titled according to the publication date.)