Use of a prospective risk analysis method to improve the safety of healthcare workers in oncology hospitals during the COVID-19 spread among cancer patients

Background: Because of their vulnerability, cancer patients were exposed to viral infections and especially by the spread of the COVID-19, the coronavirus pandemic. According to published scientific data, the coronavirus was spread by sneezing, coughing, or the contact of the eyes, nose, and mouth through contaminated spaces. For these reasons, the oncology center's staff needs more protection and more precaution. A multidisciplinary hospital team was assembled to define critical failures linked to cancer patient process in hospital and proposed different actions to secure them and improve this process. Methods: According to a risk management tool (Failures Modes Effect and Criticality Analysis), the cancer patient process was mapped in many steps. During the videoconference brainstorming, many ideas were expressed and were classified into an Ishikawa diagram. The criticality indices were calculated from the severity, the occurrence, and the detection probability. Results: The cancer patient process has been described;20 failures have been identified with 8029 points of the sum of critical indices. The new organization of the cancer patient process, the program of training of administrative staff and security agents of hospitals, wearing the protective resources were reduced to the criticality index of 6615 points, a mean of factor reduction of 1291, and the standard deviation was 5007.75. Conclusion: Modification of cancer patient process in oncology center resulted in an important risk reduction as shown by risk analysis. Our study illustrates the usefulness of risk analysis methods in the healthcare system. A systematic use of risk analysis was needed to improve the safety of high-risk activities in healthcare processes. © 2020 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NCND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.