incident report documentation policy?

[karray]

My facility came out with a new policy for incident reporting after somthing happened at a sister facility. The new. policy says that if an incident happens EVEN if nurse not in facility, that nurse will complete incident report the next day when staff report it to Her! Has anyone heard of something like This? I respectfully refused. Because I am the only nurse onsite, (adult day care) the director of the center was told she had to do it. Anybody know where I can get info regarding how potentially bad this policy is. Thanks

[agldragonRN]

i would say it is okay as long as you document that it happened the day before, e.g. "jane doe, cna reported that she observed patient yesterday in the bathroom sitting up on the floor." etc...

[agldragonRN]

one time, i saw a discoloration on patient's arm and i asked her where she got it from, she told me she was stung by a bee 3 days prior when she went outside. so i wrote an incident report and charted it happened 3 days ago.

[new_worker]

this is kinda weird because things can happen that were not put into the incident report, something might be left out of it that actually did happen but someone would not want to mention something certain to protect them selves i guess. i think it is not a good idea since you might not get the full 100% detail as if you were their doing it as it happened.

just my :twocents:

[manchmal]

Can anyone tell you NOT to file an incident report? Say a doctor or supervisor tells a nurse that something doesn't require incident report, or specifically not to fill one out. Or an RN tells an LVN not to fill one out. The incident reports require supervisor or physician signature. Should staff fill one out anyhow if in THEIR estimation it's an event worth writing about, and submit it to supervisor or physician anyhow (probably making them annoyed, if they have said it isn't an incident report event), just to cover their own butt and assure pt. safety?

I feel pressure not to fill out incident reports when I think I should, but it's not an autonomous nursing action (i.e. I have to report it to someone else, who has to sign it, and they can be irritated that I filled it out to begin with, or tell me it isn't incident-worthy).