The Radiology Events Register (RAER)

Key Principles

Notification of incidents is anonymous and confidential. We request that data that could identify patients, staff or institutions should not be included in the report.

If a notifier has any suspicions or concerns that an incident could be the subject of a medico-legal claim, and they are uncomfortable notifying information, please do not notify.

The key reason for the project is not to count incidents, but to characterise them. Most incident types occur at a sufficiently low frequency at institutional level, that they are difficult to characterise and learn from. By aggregating from multiple institutions, we hope to be able to provide some answers about the circumstances and contributing factors leading to incidents, the sorts of actions that were taken by staff to minimise the incidents and the outcomes.

Narrative descriptions of the incidents are the richest form of information for finding out what happened. They provide the greatest opportunity to learn about the circumstances leading to the incident and if and how the incident can be prevented.

Other Sources of data

Other sources of information will be used to supplement the incident data collected, most notably from medico-legal data.