Identification of key risk areas and failure modes using the FMEA method for the prevention and control of major infectious diseases in a stomatology department.

Purpose: To perform risk assessment and analysis of potential infection during stomatology workflow in a hospital in the context of a major infectious disease outbreak, and to determine the key failure modes and measures to prevent and control infection.

Method: Following the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method based on the stomatology workflow, the opinions of 30 domain-experts in related fields were collected through questionnaires to determine all potential failure modes in the severity (S), occurrence (O), and detectability (D) dimensions. The group score was then integrated through the median method and the risk priority number (RPN) was obtained.