The Patient Incident Learning And Reporting System
The Patient Incident Learning and Reporting System (PILARS) is a website for UK registered and student osteopaths
to use as a learning resource. This platform enables you to anonymously report, view and comment on actual and
potential patient incidents relating to osteopathic services, and learn from those experiences.
The platform can only be accessed with a username and password. The log in details can be obtained from the ozone,
the General Osteopathic Council website for osteopaths and the secure members' area of Institute of
Osteopathy website:
-
General Osteopathic Council o zone:
Login to the o zone, then select the "resources" tab at the top of the
screen. Next, on the left menu select "research". Finally, in the left menu select "NCOR patient incident
learning and reporting system". Here you will find the username and password for accessing PILARS.
- Institute of Osteopathy (coming soon)
To Submit A Report/View Existing Reports, Login Above.
About
The Patient Incident Learning And Reporting System (PILARS) has been designed to enable osteopaths to report
anonymously, share and discuss challenging experiences relating to practice-related incidents, patient safety,
practitioner safety or adverse events associated with osteopathic care. This can all be done anonymously online.
The information gathered from these reports will be analysed only by the research team at the National Council
for Osteopathic Research (NCOR) in order to identify trends. The information will be fed back to the osteopathic
profession to improve patient care, and highlight any recurring issues about which osteopaths should be aware.
We hope that osteopaths will learn from each other, share helpful experiences of their own, and become more
aware of situations and circumstances that may lead to the occurrence of adverse events or difficult incidents
in practice.
We would like to reassure you that this forum is both secure and anonymous. It is intended to be educational and
supportive for the profession. The forum is password protected, available for use only by registered osteopaths
and students: this site is not available or intended for use by patients, the general public, or other
healthcare professionals. There is no known way for users to be identified unless they specifically choose to do
so. We will monitor the site and remove any identifiable data (of practices, practitioners or patients) should
it arise. Please be careful to ensure complete anonymity when adding information to the site.
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Benefits of Reporting
Reporting and reflecting on experiences in an open and anonymous fashion can have a positive impact on patient
care. It can help practitioners to avoid similar incidents in future, learn how incidents were managed from
colleagues’ experiences, and allow us to gain valuable insight into potential incidents to help minimise risks
to both patients and practitioners. The whole profession has an opportunity to learn from these experiences so
one report may have the potential to produce positive effects for osteopaths who may encounter difficult
situations in practice, and on the vast number of patients receiving osteopathic care. Improving patient care
and participating in this reflective process can also benefit the osteopathic profession as a whole as we can
become more insightful and pro-active healthcare professionals.
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Anonymity
The forum can only be accessed with a username and password. The log in details can be obtained from the o zone,
the General Osteopathic Council website: General
Osteopathic Council o zone Section, or the secure members' area of the Institute of Osteopathy
website: Institute of Osteopathy Members Area (coming soon)
This is to ensure that only registered osteopaths have access to the forum. The username and password will be
the same for everyone to help ensure that users of the forum cannot be identified. Additionally, in the interest
of security, the login details will be changed on a regular basis, so you may need to retrieve new log in
details from the above websites periodically if you wish to view the site or add a contribution.
If for any reason you experience difficulty accessing these details, then please get in touch with us via the
feedback form on this site’s homepage. The information provided in the forum will be stored within a secure
database, which is independent from the NCOR website, or any other osteopathic group. For those who are familiar
with IP addresses, the IP address of the computer from which a report has been submitted is not stored to disk.
The RAM cache that might be able to carry this information is emptied continuously, therefore leaving it
impossible to identify individuals submitting reports.
Osteopaths who submit incidents and comments to PILARS understand that data will be used for research purposes
by the National Council for Osteopathic Research. Reports will be produced for the osteopathic profession, and
salient information may be made available publicly, while preserving the anonymity of osteopaths and their patients.
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Reporting Guide
What is an incident?
In this context, an incident is an undesirable or unexpected experience related to osteopathic practice.
Incidents can include events which may be related to patient care, or they may relate to other events you
experience as a practitioner, or aspects of running your practice. To help you choose the appropriate category
for an event you can view the Example of Events PDF.
Examples of Events PDF.
An incident is defined as any type of patient safety event, error, accident or deviation from the norm
that either:
actually happened: represented
by PILARS as a red traffic light, or ;
nearly happened: represented by
PILARS as an amber traffic light, or
has the potential to happen:
represented by PILARS as a green traffic light
Terms and Conditions
Before you submit a report we require you to acknowledge and understand the following points:
- It is not NCOR’s responsibility to investigate any reports, nor is it within their remit.
- This forum has been created to enable practitioners to report and discuss incidents relating to osteopathy
in order to support continued learning about patient safety and risks associated with osteopathic treatment,
and events that can occur within day-to-day practice life.
- NCOR does not retain personal information identifying individual practitioners, staff or patients. You must
ensure that you do not include any personal identifiable information in your report or any comments on
reports.
- Reporting in this forum is not a substitute for reporting incidents to your insurer or the General
Osteopathic Council.
- NCOR reserves the right to alter/remove any personal identifiable data or other objectionable content from
reports and comments.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our thanks and appreciation for the help, advice and guidance that the chiropractic
profession has given us, in particular Dr Rob Finch- The Royal College of Chiropractors and Professor Haymo
Thiel – Anglo-European College of Chiropractic. The chiropractic profession have developed a site called CPIRLS
for the online reporting of and learning from adverse events and this has helped us greatly in the development
of this site.
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Feedback Form
Please use this feedback form to provide us with any feedback relating to this website, its format, content, and
ease of use. Please note that this feedback form is not to be used for reporting events of any kind. If you have
an enquiry unrelated to this site you can contact us via the main NCOR website: www.ncor.org.uk.
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