Objective:

To describe incidents related to healthcare services reported by Brazilian citizens on the Health Surveillance Notification System.

Methods:

This was a descriptive study, using the database from the Health Surveillance Notification System (Notivisa) of the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa), 'citizen' module, between 2014 and 2018.

Results:

935 incidents were reported, most of them occurred among females (60.9%), the elderly (20.1%) and those of white race/skin color (51.0%). The majority of the reported incidents were related to the use of medications (50.8%), falls (7.5%) and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) (7.2%), which occurred during provision of healthcare, treatment or surgery (37.3%), in daytime (58.3%) and in hospital setting (37.4%).

Conclusion:

It could be seen a low adherence to the notification system among the citizens. There was a higher frequency of incidents related to medications, falls and HAIs. This shows that citizens have the capability to recognize and report these incidents as patient safety issues.

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