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.
- NIMS Access and Control Guidance - Revision Nov 2020.pdf (size 1.1 MB)
- HSE NIMS User Set Up Request Form (Incident Module) Version 5.docx (size 88.8 KB)
Please see below the National Incident Management System Reporting forms.
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
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.
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 Data Quality Statement (coming soon)
- NIMS Picklist.pdf (size 1.1 KB) (describes how incidents are reported on the system)
- NIMS Medication list (coming soon)
- NIMS Location tree (coming soon)
- NIMS Review Screen SOP (coming soon)
- SOP for the management of duplicate records (for non ePOE sites – see voiding SOP for ePOE sites below) (coming soon)
- Data Quality tool. You can download here: word report template, excel tool for national level, excel modified for HG and excel modified for CHOs (to be used after mapping locations - contact NIMS@hse.ie for this).
The HSE NIMS team recommend that staff complete the HSEland data quality e-learning module developed by HIQA.
Reporting
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)
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.