Investigators: Prof Rick Iedema, Dr Patrick Kelly, Prof Elizabeth Manias, Dr Jennifer Smith-Merry, Prof Merrilyn Walton (CI). Evidence of the patient experience is fundamental to creating effective health policy and service responses yet this is missing from our knowledge of adverse events.  Adverse events (AE) are actions occurring during health care which cause harm to patients. Despite considerable investment in efforts to reduce AEs, there are no recent, large scale studies of AEs in Australian State or Territory hospital patients. We therefore lack basic descriptive information about patient experiences and have no reliable baseline estimates that could be used to assess the impact of efforts to reduce AEs. This project aims to understand AEs from the patient experiences. Through this study patients’ experiences, frequency and characteristics of AEs will be determined and patient characteristic’s will be compared between patients who experience AEs and those who do not. This project will also explore current services and policy structures designed to deal with adverse events.