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Willingness to Report Medical Incidents in Healthcare: a Psychological Model Based on Organizational Trust and Benefit/Risk Perceptions

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Abstract

Many healthcare organizations have incident reporting systems to reduce and prevent medical errors. However, many systems have failed or not been implemented due to medical professionals’ reluctance to report errors made by themselves or others. This study investigated the factors influencing their willingness to report incidents voluntarily. A psychological model based on the trust heuristic was proposed, hypothesizing that organizational trust could affect willingness to report based on the perceived benefits and risks of incident reporting or directly influence willingness to report. Three hundred twenty participants were recruited from 19 provinces in China to participate in an online survey conducted between June and July 2018. Participants included doctors, nurses, medical technicians, medical service staff, and administrative staff from different hospitals. All had access to incident reporting systems. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to examine the proposed psychological model. Participants had a modest willingness of reporting. Organizational trust was found to, directly and indirectly, affect participants’ willingness to report their own incidents. Compared with perceived risk, perceived benefit was a more important predictor for willingness of reporting and a more important mediator in the effect of organizational trust on willingness of reporting. Our results highlight the importance of increasing the perceived benefit from incident reporting and building a “trust culture” for improving incident reporting.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all medical staffs who participated in the survey.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 71871158) and Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project Fund Office of Tianjin (Project No. TJGL19-017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China

    Xiaosong Zhao PhD, Shumeng Zhao MS & Na Liu MS

  2. Center for Psychological Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Peng Liu PhD

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  1. Xiaosong Zhao PhD
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  2. Shumeng Zhao MS
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  4. Peng Liu PhD
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Correspondence to Peng Liu PhD.

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Zhao, X., Zhao, S., Liu, N. et al. Willingness to Report Medical Incidents in Healthcare: a Psychological Model Based on Organizational Trust and Benefit/Risk Perceptions. J Behav Health Serv Res 48, 583–596 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-021-09753-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-021-09753-5

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