Here are top 10 most frequently reviewed sentinel event categories by The Joint Commission for Jan. 1-second quarter of 2011.
1. Unintended retention of a foreign body
2. Op/Post-op complication
3. Wrong-patient, wrong-site, wrong-procedure
4. Delay in treatment
5. Suicide
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6. Fall
7. Other unanticipated event
8. Criminal event
9. Medication error
10. Perinatal death/Injury
Note from The Joint Commission: The reporting of most sentinel events to The Joint Commission is voluntary and represents only a small proportion of actual events.Therefore, these data are not an epidemiologic data set and no conclusions should be drawn about the actual relative frequency of events or trends in events over time.
Source: The Joint Commission's Sentinel Event Data: Event Type by Year (1995-Second Quarter 2011) (pdf).
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