Analysis of the adverse events reported to the office of the clinical director at a dental school in Bogotá, Colombia

Dentistry is interested in identifying and controlling adverse events, understood as involuntary injuries to the patient during dental care. The aim of this study was to analyze the adverse events reported to the Office of the Clinical Director at the School of Dentistry at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia) during 2011 2012. It was an observational, descriptive study that evaluated 227 dental clinical records of patients who filed a complaint with the Office of the Clinical Director. Of these, 43 were adverse events and were used as the basis for this study. Of the 16,060 patients who received care during 2011 2012, 0.26%(43) filed a complaint involving an adverse event, of which 97.7% were considered preventable. Most of these (76.18%, n= 32) occurred during clinical management of treatments in different specialties, 9.5%(4) were the result of deficient external dental laboratory quality, and 14.32%(6) were due to failure in document management, soft tissue injury, misdiagnosis and swallowing foreign objects. Of the patients involved, 65.2%(28) received care from postgraduate students, with the highest number of cases in the Oral Rehabilitation speciality. The occurrence of adverse events during dental care, indicates the need for information about their origin in order to establish protection barriers and prevent their incidence, particularly in the educational area under the student dental clinic service model.