An Innovative Risk Assessment Tool for Prospective Risk Analysis to Improve the Quality in Health Care: The Bow-Tie

In healthcare, serious adverse events and medical errors can easily occur jeopardizing patient safety and continuity of treatment [1]. However, studies have revealed that identifying risks and working on analyzing and mitigating them, have proven to lower down undesirable and preventable healthcare associated events [2]. The Health and Safety Executive defines hazard as ‘’ anything that may cause harm, such as chemicals, electricity, working from ladders, an open drawer etc.’’ and risk as ‘’the chance, high or low, that somebody could be harmed by these and other hazards, together with an indication of how serious the harm could be’’ [3]. In healthcare, there are several events that could be prevented such as falls in hospitals, surgical site infections, drugs’ side effects and post-operative complications and having a risk assessment model in place would help deployment of barriers to prevent the occurrence of these events.