Q: The Nurse confounded the medication of two residents in a home for elderly. Do I have to fill in two notification forms?
A: Yes, at least if you are in care of both residents.

Q: During treatment with prednisolone and methotrexate, a patient presented with oral candidiasis. Later we learned that she had developped diabetes. Do I have to fill a form for that case?
A: No, this was a monitoring error (since you did not control timely for diabetes); the drugs were applied in a ordinary way, and the undesired drug reaction (diabetes during corticosteroide treatment) has not to be notified in our study.

Q: A patient was transferred from acute to geriatric care for continued i.v. antibiotic treatment. After three days I was contacted by the family because the patient had not received his antibiotic treatment and was febrile. The i.v. antibiotics were not mentioned on the acute clinic transfering report. Do I have to Report that case?
A: No! For two reasons: Firstly, you have not been in care of the patient when the incident happened, and secondly, our study aims to investigate incidents in primary care, but your patient was transferred from one secondary care unit to the other.

Q: Should I notify the daily problem of medication non-compliance of the patients?
A: No, only if an incident arises out of it (eg. overmedication when taking medication as planned.

Q: Are children who are in a creche to be considered as cared by an institution?
A: No, only children who are in an institution for their disease (like cerebral palsy or schizophrenia) count as cared by the institution; normal children count as cared by the parents (when sick) or not cared by others.

Q: Do we have to fill in all items in patients consulting a second time during denominator analysis?
A: Yes, because we cannot assign the patients to their first consultation by year of birth and gender alone.

Q: Does the anti-rickets prophylaxis with vitamin D in healthy toddlers count as a medicament?
A: Yes.

Q: Are prisoners supposed to be regarded as institutionalized patients?
A: Yes, since usually they are not allowed to take their medication by themselfs.