Barriers to patient safety incident reporting by Brazilian health professionals: an integrative review.

An integrative review was performed to identify and analyze national studies on barriers to patient safety incident reporting by health professionals within Brazilian health services. A search in the Virtual Health Library (BVS) Portal, PubMed and Web of Science was performed in January 2017 for papers published in the last ten years. One thousand and seven publications were identified and, following application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, eight papers were analyzed, five of which were qualitative and three quantitative. All research was conducted in hospitals, exclusively with nursing professionals, and 75% was conducted in Southeast Brazil. Most studies showed an under-reporting of incidents, and the main reasons were fear about reporting, reporting focused on more severe incidents, lack of knowledge about the subject or how to report and, registered nurse-centered reporting. While study of this theme is still incipient in Brazil, this review found important weaknesses in the process and barriers to incident reporting by professionals, revealing a need for encouraging their participation, eliminating or reducing such barriers with a view to strengthening patient safety.