Quality Improvement (QI) and Incident Reporting are foundational to safe nursing practice and patient harm prevention. QI uses systematic, data-driven processes to identify gaps in care and implement measurable improvements. Incident reporting is the formal mechanism through which near-misses, adverse events, and sentinel events are documented — without blame — so root causes can be identified and system failures corrected. If incident reporting is avoided or delayed, patterns of harm go undetected, individual providers bear disproportionate liability, and preventable deaths recur. In Canada, provincial legislation (e.g., Ontario's *Quality of Care Information Protection Act*) protects incident-review documents from disclosure to promote candid reporting. Top 3 Nursing Priorities: 1. Report all incidents — including near-misses — promptly and accurately, without minimizing or omitting detail 2. Complete an objective, factual incident report immediately after stabilizing the patient 3. Notify the most responsible provider and document the notification separately from the incident report (the report itself is NOT charted in the patient's health record) Common NCLEX Trap: Candidates frequently chart "Incident report filed" in the patient's health record — this is wrong. The incident...