National Incident Management System (NIMS)

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is an end to end incident management tool developed to improve patient and service user safety. The system also supports reviews into incidents, the monitoring of recommendations and records complaints, with more than 210,000 incidents reported annually.

The HSE Incident Management team are responsible for the governance, management and oversight of the incident management system for the HSE.

Please contact NIMS helpdesk at NIMS@hse.ie with any queries in relation to incident reporting, management, analysis, support, improvement suggestions, etc.

NIMS Access

Access to the system is restricted and only granted if certain conditions are met.

Please see below the National Incident Management System Reporting forms.

Incident reporting and forms

National incident report form 01 - Person (PDF, 1.1 MB, 7 pages)

National incident report form 02 - Crash Collision (PDF, 427 KB, 4 pages)

National incident report form 03 - Property (PDF, 487 KB, 2 pages)

National incident report form 04 - Dangerous Occurrence (PDF, 443 KB, 2 pages)

Interactive NIRF Forms

Sample SOP NIMS Interactive Reporting (Word document, 425 KB, 4 pages)

National incident report form 01 - Person interactive (PDF, 3.2 MB, 7 pages)

National incident report form 02 - Crash Collision interactive (PDF, 756 KB 4 pages)

National incident report form 04 - Dangerous Occurrence HC NF interactive (PDF, 568 KB, 2 pages)

National Incident Management System Training

It is recommended that all users of the NIMS system avail of training. There are currently two modules available on the HSELand website:

NIMS Training for Incident Entry (required for NIMS access)
GDPR training (required for NIMS access)
NIMS Entering Incident Reviews

This training video presents insights on NIMS reporting using views.

There is also a remote training course available for primary users of the NIMS system:

NIMS Reports, Views & Dashboard Training*

This advanced course is offered to users who require the necessary skills to access, review and identify trends for their area(s) of responsibility.

*Places for the NIMS reports, views and dashboard training are limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis. To ensure that the right staff are targeted for the training, only those who are active users of the system may attend.

HSE staff wishing to attend can contact nims@hse.ie and the State Claims Agency will notify attendees directly thereafter.

Please do not hesitate to contact the HSE NIMS team at NIMS@hse.ie for any ad hoc training requests or support required.

NIMS Locations

Each NIMS user can see their allocated locations and what access they have in terms of locations in their account. If you want to see the entire location list available on NIMS, please access the Discovery Zone Hub in the HSELand. A short demo video is also published in the Discovery Hub to support you in understanding and using the full list.

How to access the full location list (PDF, 3 Pages, 737 KB)

If you need to add or amend a location on behalf of your organisation or service then please use the Location Change Form (Word doc, 145 KB, 2 pages)

Support documents available:

Guide for setting up a new NIMS location or for changing a location (PDF, 12 Pages, 1.6 MB)

Location change request (Excel, 18 KB)

Data Quality

The primary purpose of incident and near-miss reporting is for the purpose of learning from such events, prevention, transparency, risk identification and mitigation, regulatory requirements and policy.

Incident management systems are mainly intended to facilitate reporting and support staff in managing the incident management process.

The collective incident data further supports learning and improvement, assists in analysis and decision making, shifts the organisation from silo thinking to a system-thinking approach.

HIQA Information management standards for national health and social care data collections 2017 describes the benefits of quality data include:

facilitation of better informed strategic, national and local planning for health and social care
provision of safer, better quality care for patients
better informed national and local policies
greater contributions to research
improved population health.

Quality data and information refers to data and information that are relevant, accurate and reliable, timely and punctual, coherent and comparable, and accessible and clear.

The HSE has developed a number of documents to support its data quality framework:

Data dictionary
NIMS picklist (PDF, 1 MB, 38 pages) - describes how incidents are reported on the system
NIMS Data Quality report template - Word document (DOC, 13 Pages, 651 KB)
NIMS national level data quality tool (.xlsx, 631 KB)
NIMS national level data quality tool for HG (.xlsx, 580 KB)
NIMS national level data quality tool for CHO (.xlsx, 449 KB) - to be used after mapping locations - NIMS@hse.ie

The following documents are in production and will be available soon:

NIMS Data Quality Statement
NIMS Medication list
NIMS Location tree
NIMS Review Screen SOP
SOP for the management of duplicate records (for non ePOE sites - see voiding SOP for ePOE sites below)

The HSE NIMS team recommend that staff complete the HSEland data quality e-learning module developed by HIQA.

Reporting

NIMS System wide KPIs and internal reporting

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is the key platform for HSE and HSE-funded healthcare providers to report incidents on. Additionally, the NIMS system is the source of data in terms of incident management as a quality indicator and is also used to inform the National Service Plan KPIs. To help HSE and HSE-funded healthcare providers understand and to improve data quality we have written the Guide included below, which outlines how the data is pulled from NIMS at national level. It will allow services to apply the same methodology and ensure consistency when the data is pulled at local level for data validation and monitoring purposes.

This Guide is a tool for services to allow them to understand and replicate at local level the procedures employed by the National Quality and Patient Safety Directorate (NQPSD) in calculating a range of reports relevant for NIMS assurance and data quality purposes, including but not limited to the three KPIs selected for inclusion in the 2023 HSE National Service Plan under Service wide indicators. This Guide only focuses on measurement from a data and technical perspective, use of measurements and improvement initiatives are outside the scope for this Guide.

Current version: Integrated Guide to NIMS reporting for data quality and assurance (Word document, 276 KB, 10 pages)

NIMS Electronic Point of Entry (ePOE) Incident Reporting

To date, HSE and HSE funded services across Ireland have relied on either a paper based reporting system or secondary software to capture incident data before manually inputting them onto NIMS.

NIMS has the functionality to perform as an end-to-end incident management tool that will allow services to manage incidents through the incident lifecycle on a single platform to improve the quality and safety of care provided.

The significant benefit of the national platform is that there is the opportunity for wider system learning. What might seem like a once off event within your service might be happening on a wider scale. Electronic point of entry reporting is where frontline staff enter incidents directly onto the National Incident Management System eliminating the need for paper reporting.

For more information: NIMS Electronic Point of Entry (ePOE) Incident Reporting Infographic (PDF*)

*The infographic contains additional links including a quick guide for local implementation and sample templates.

The below voiding SOP is relevant for sites who have rolled out ePOE and advises the limited scenarios when an incident may be voided by a line manager. It also describes how duplicate reported incidents should be managed on the system.

SOP for voiding incident notices on NIMS (for ePOE sites)

Webinar series

NIMS KPI Demonstration webinar (March 4th, 2022)

Please note data shown as part of the demonstration is fabricated and for demonstration purposes only

QPS TalkTime The National Incident Management System & Electronic Point of Entry (Nov. 8th, 2022)

The HSE Incident Management (System) Governance Committee

The HSE Incident Management (System) Governance Committee was established as the primary HSE governance committee overseeing the delivery of strategic objectives set out in the HSE Patient Safety Strategy and the Workplace Health and Wellbeing Unit Strategy as they relate to incident management. The strategic objectives stem from them both and have been further developed to focus in particular on the role of incident reporting and the system that holds the data. It is targeted at improving incident management processes as they relate to the systems used in the HSE, predominantly the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

It will act as a stakeholder forum (e.g. operational leads) from across the HSE including end user representatives to ensure a strategic and integrated organisational approach is taken on the creation and delivery of the HSE incident management strategic programme in line with the HSE Patient Safety Strategy. A subset of members of this committee will act as representatives of HSE IM on both the HSE NIMS Modules Joint Governance Committee and the Joint NIMS Governance Committee. The latter being a joint committee with the SCA that focuses on technical development and priorities.

HSE Incident Management System Governance Committee terms of reference (PDF, 790 KB, 8 pages)

Feedback and Complaints

The HSE NIMS team welcome feedback on incident reporting on the NIMS system, be it positive or negative. We continually strive to improve your experience as a user and your suggestions for improvement are welcome. Please contact NIMS@hse.ie . We aim to get back to you within 48 hours of you contacting us. If you feel that you have reason to complain about your experience, NIMS, the use of data, or otherwise about the applications of NIMS in the HSE then please do not hesitate to submit a complaint to NIMS@hse.ie directly or the Quality and Patient Safety Incident Management email QPSIM@hse.ie.

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