Quality and safety of health care service delivery remain a challenge worldwide, due to unsafe care, inappropriate practices, adverse events, and medication errors that result in harm, disability, and death of patients. This study examines the status of quality and safety management of health care service delivery in public hospitals in Rwanda. In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 564 hospital managers from 47 hospitals received an online email-based questionnaire.
The study sample population was 235 managers (5 persons from each hospital). In all, 98.7% of public hospitals reported incidents, and only 39.3% of them have regularly reported all types of incidents. The most common incidents were adverse drug event's (25.3%), loss to follow-up/referrals (25%), and surgical site infection's (20%). The culture of blame and punishment is a challenge across hospitals. Reassuring adverse events reporting and learning from errors need to be emphasized and prioritized in public hospitals.
