Canadian Anesthesia Incident Reporting System (CAIRS): The Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society’s National Patient Safety Initiative

Excerpt

Anesthesia practice has made great strides to improve the delivery of safe anesthetic care. In a widely cited meta-analysis, Daniel Bainbridge and his colleagues documented a more than tenfold reduction in anesthesia-related mortality since the 1970s.1 Nevertheless, the failure of perioperative and other anesthesia-related patient safety initiatives remains a cause for concern in healthcare systems globally. The most recent data from the International Surgical Outcomes Trial (ISOS) show that more than 10% of patients suffer a moderate-to-severe adverse postoperative event.2,3 This adversity, be it surgical or anesthesia related, results in increased hospital stay and cost4-6 as well as increasing negligence claims.7 The extent to which these adverse events are secondary to errors and/or a breakdown in processes of care, and therefore preventable, is unknown.8 There is a strong belief, however, that perioperative outcomes can be improved. …