The peer review process is appropriate in the following situations:
● An adverse patient outcome has occurred. ● A serious risk or injury to a patient occurred. ● A failure to rescue incident occurred (Fujita et al., 2009).
A shared governance structure facilitates the peer review process, fostering peer-to-peer accountability (Fujita et al., 2009). Furthermore, the process can help determine if a breach in practice is an isolated incident or a trend occurring across a unit or throughout the organization. In a shared governance environment, unit councils or the nursing council can address unit-wide or system problems. To aggregate trends, peer review cases can be categorized as:
● Appropriate care with no adverse outcomes ● Appropriate care with adverse/unexpected outcomes ● Inappropriate care with no adverse outcomes ● Inappropriate care with adverse/unexpected outcomes (Hitchings et al., 2008)