IBEAS: a pioneer study on patient safety in Latin America

The Latin American Study of Adverse Events (IBEAS) is the first study on hospital-related harmful incidents to be carried out on a large scale in Latin America. The lack of previous studies in the Latin American context poses a difficult challenge, but at the same time highlights the importance of the IBEAS study as a first essential step towards improving patient safety What is the issue? What is the extent of the problem? • On any given day, 10% of the patients admitted to the hospitals in the study had experienced some kind of harm due to health care. This was the finding of the prevalence study, • This risk doubled when considering the entire duration of the patient’s hospital stay: 20% of inpatients experienced at least one harmful incident during their hospital stay. This was the finding of the incidence study