Clinical Risk Assessment in Intensive Care Unit

Background: clinical risk management focuses on improving thequality and safety of health care services by identifying the circumstancesand opportunities that put patients at risk of harm and acting to preventor control those risks. the goal of this study is to identify and assessthe failure modes in the icu of qazvin’s social security hospital (razihospital) through failure mode and effect analysis (fmea).methods: this was a qualitative-quantitative research by focusdiscussion group (fdg) performed in qazvin province, iran during2011. the study population included all individuals and owners whoare familiar with the process in icu. sampling method was purposefuland the fdg group members were selected by the researcher. theresearch instrument was standard worksheet that has been used byseveral researchers. data was analyzed by fmea technique.results: forty eight clinical errors and failure modes identified,results showed that the highest risk probability number (rpn) wasin respiratory care “ventilator’s alarm malfunction (no alarm)”with the score 288, and the lowest was in gastrointestinal “notwashing the ng-tube” with the score 8.conclusions: many of the identified errors can be prevented bygroup members. clinical risk assessment and management is thekey to delivery of effective health care.