Reporting of hazards and near-misses in the ambulatory care setting.

The purpose of this study was to describe the frequency and types of hazard and near-miss events in the ambulatory setting. Nursing students (N = 566) submitted 9272 reports while in their ambulatory care rotation. Of these, 1624 were hazards and 985 were near-misses. The most commonly reported hazards and near-misses were related to infection (20.0%) and medication (19.1%), respectively. The most frequent category of open-ended comments was related to administrative problems.