The Future of Patient Safety

Abstract

Patient safety has been evolving and changing since its conception, and this evolution will inevitably continue as it competes for attention with other social problems and as healthcare struggles with conflicts among increasing workloads, performance and production pressures, technological innovation, and increasingly limited human and economic resources. Patient safety is, at present, a reform movement becalmed, captured by the industry it set out to reform. The authors see four possible futures: congealing into bureaucracy (already in progress), rebranding as something else (similar to quality improvement rebranding itself as patient safety), simply dying out, or fundamental reform. Fundamental reform is unfortunately the least likely possibility. It will require healthcare to relinquish its dominant position in patient safety and to develop substantive, equal partnerships with safety sciences.