Overview
The National System for Incident Reporting (NSIR) is a voluntary reporting system. It was designed to make it easier to share and learn from medication incidents. NSIR data can support a number of quality improvement activities, including
- Identifying safety strategies at the local level
- Summarizing data for internal reporting
- Supporting the development of system-wide alerts and recommendations
Find out more about incident reporting and patient safety.
Data source
Canadian hospitals and long-term care facilities voluntarily submit data to NSIR.
Data coverage
NSIR collects data on all medication and intravenous fluid problems (for example, omitted dose, wrong quantity, wrong patient) that occur during the medication use process. These can include rare events and near-miss incidents.
Data availability
Participating facilities can fully view and analyze their own data as well as de-identified data submitted by other participating facilities.
Data is not currently available for public requests.
Classification
Participating facilities submit a standardized set of data elements to CIHI through a secure, privacy-compliant, web-based interface.
Data elements
NSIR collects information on 10 mandatory and 23 optional data elements. These are included in the following 6 data domains:
- Incident Impact
- Incident Discovery
- Patient Characteristics
- Medication Incident Details
- Drug Product Information
- Investigation and Findings
Data quality
CIHI ensures that the quality of the information in our data holdings is suited to its intended uses and that data users are provided with accurate information about data quality.
Read more about our Data and Information Quality Program.
NSIR data quality documentation is currently unavailable.
Privacy impact assessment
Privacy impact assessments (PIAs) evaluate and address the privacy impacts of programs and systems.
Go to the Privacy and security page to view the PIA, which contains further information about the purposes, data elements and data sources for this data holding.
Contact us
For further information, please email