What Counts as a Patient Safety Issue

A patient safety issue is anything that has caused, or could cause, avoidable harm to a patient. In dental practice this includes incidents, near misses, unsafe conditions, equipment faults, missed checks, poor communication, repeated hazards and systems that make safe care unreliable.

Dental nurses should report risks before harm occurs. Examples include a wrong-patient near miss, a missed allergy alert, a decontamination breach caught in time, an emergency kit gap, repeated privacy failures or an unclear referral process; each can reveal a risk that needs addressing.

Examples in dental nursing

• Wrong patient, wrong tooth, wrong procedure or wrong appointment risk.
• Medication, allergy, medical-history or consent information missed or unclear.
• Infection prevention, sharps, decontamination or sterile-storage failures.
• Equipment, oxygen, AED, emergency drug or medical emergency readiness problems.
• Safeguarding concerns, discrimination, abuse, coercion or unsafe restraint.
• Record, confidentiality, referral, follow-up, appointment or communication failures.

Some issues require immediate action; others are low level but recur. Repeated workarounds can become serious if the underlying system is not fixed.

Incident, near miss, hazard

Patient safety reporting covers harm, near misses, unsafe conditions and repeated system failures that could harm future patients.