Why we need a re-think of patient safety practices.

Abstract

There is no doubt patient safety in our health care facilities is a global priority. Worldwide, we continue to see high numbers of patients suffering harm, or at worst, death, related to unsafe care and these risks are amplified in low and middle-income countries (World Health Organization, 2021). This is of concern given that a significant proportion of these adverse events are avoidable (World Health Organization, 2021). Global reports outline more than three million deaths annually due to unsafe care (Slawomirski et al., 2020). Many of these events occur within healthcare environments where targeted, group-specific and systematically developed prevention strategies have been implemented. In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) (World Health Organization, 2021) formulated ‘The Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030’, recognising patient safety as a top health priority. In this report, patient safety is viewed as a framework of activities that address cultures, processes, procedures, behaviours and technologies with the aim of creating an environment whereby the potential for preventable harm to occur is reduced, errors are made more unlikely, or at minimum, their impact is lessened.