Sentinel events

Sentinel events are preventable incidents and result in serious harm, including death, to a patient.

They are a subset of Severity Assessment Code 1 (SAC1) clinical incidents and are reported by all Australian states and territories.

There is a list of sentinel events which healthcare staff across Australia have agreed should not happen. In WA, our practice is to report all incidents on this list, including near misses and low harm events, as sentinel events (external site). We do this to ensure we are accountable and transparent and to continually improve patient safety.

Like other SAC1 clinical incidents, healthcare teams review sentinel events to identify what factors contributed to the patient being harmed or dying.

In this case, lower numbers are better, indicating that fewer preventable clinical incidents have occurred.

Comparison with national data for sentinel events (external site) is contained within annual Reports on Government Services (external site).

Our low number of sentinel events tell us that care provided in WA Health system is very safe.

About the data

In WA we require public hospitals to report all sentinel events, including near misses. The data below is obtained from our public hospitals.

The data only includes cases where the investigation has been completed.

Sentinel events occur infrequently. We do not recommend comparisons between years due to small numbers.