how formal and informal reporting methods are used for reporting adverse events in a health care organization

Formal and informal reporting methods are communication techniques used to pass information to the proper personnel. The formal report is highly structured and relatively long. The informal report presents one that is relatively short and less structured. The informal reports are not meticulously structured therefore do not contain any analytical or well-researched information. This limits its purpose to the provision of information to aid in decision-making. Formal reports contain properly researched information that provides analytical and other relevant information to stakeholders and decision-makers to help in crucial issues. The informal report only gives the rough idea of the adverse event in the health organization as formal reports give the decision-maker an option of working with already analyzed data and information, enabling a better decision-making technique. An adverse event is any undesirable occurrence. In our case, the undesirable occurrence links up with medical products in a patient. For example, the expectation of death can be graded as an adverse event (Logio & Ramanujam, 2010).

The formal reporting method would be my chosen technique to pass information in case of an adverse event.  A formal report has a format that brings out a systematic approach to the solution to the problem or brings a better understanding of the situation. Secondly, these reports are detailed, and they contain researched and analyzed details of the event. Therefore it presents the stakeholders and the relevant personnel with a data- analyzed information with easy breakdown requirements because of the possible levels of understanding. For example, if I encounter an event that might lead to an amputation of a limb, a well-organized and perfectly analyzed report would help any person reading the report to understand the reason behind the decision we decided to take.

References

Logio, L. S., & Ramanujam, R. (2010, January 1). Medical trainees’ formal and informal incident reporting across a five-hospital academic medical center. ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1553725010360077