Introduction: A systematic and inclusive approach to incident reporting help to learn from errors and to avoid preventable medical errors. Thus this study was aimed to assess incident reporting behavior and associated factors among health care professionals in public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2017.

 

Methods: A cross–sectional study was conducted at public hospitals in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2017. Multistage sampling technique was used to enroll 697 study participants. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 21. The patient safety culture tool developed by health research and quality agency was used for data collection. A multivariate linear regression model was used to identify factors associated with the outcome variable.

 

Results: The mean age of the participants was 29.06(±4.893) years. The health care professionals who were reported incident always was 30.4percent. But, 20.4% of the participants never reported an incident. A multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that;, hospital management support (p=0.001, 95%CI; 0.206, 0.389), non–punitive response to errors (p=0.001, 95%CI; 0.168, 0.292), communication openness (p=0.001, 95%CI; 0.062, 0.249), supervisors actions promoting safety (p=0.001, 95%CI; 0.211, 0.439) and feedback on errors reported(p=0.005, 95%CI; 0.041, 0.237) were significant predictors for incident reporting behaviors among health professionals.

 

Conclusion: Incident reporting behavior among health care professionals was low. To increase the incident reporting behavior among health professionals, the priority should be given by all hospital managers on feedback mechanisms, non–punitive response to errors and communication systems and process.