[Recommendations for institutional response to an adverse event].

INTRODUCTION: The organizational response after an Adverse Event (AE) is critical for the patient recovery and trust restoration in the health system. It is also crucial for the involved caregiver psychological recovery.

OBJECTIVE: To design a frame of recommendations to help the healthcare services, institutions and organizations to provide a systematic approach to an AE.

METHODS: A reduced group of authors performed a non-systematic review of the literature and developed an initial draft. The draft was sent to the rest of authors, who suggested modifications in structure, content, references and style throughout successive manuscript versions until a final one was accepted.

RESULTS: AE response includes the patient's clinical stabilization and a therapeutic plan to mitigate harm, the safeguard of used materials or health products involved, the appropriate disclosure to patient and family, the support of affected staff and their replacement if needed, the report to appropriate clinical and management heads, the event circumstances documentation and the starting of the AE investigation and analysis. Besides the professional, family and patient's trust and health recovery, the ultimate target of a correct AE response is the improvement of healthcare processes to prevent its repetition considering the AE as a system failure and learning and improving through its analysis.