Speaking For Patient Safety to Save Lives
Patient safety is essential to providing high quality health care.With the partnership and empowerment of patients, families, caregivers, healthcare workers it becomes important to educate, train and build their knowledge and capability, so to contribute and play a functional role in the whole care process and journey.
How can I contribute ?
Individual
You can take action individually, showing that patient safety is a priority and that you care about it.
Organisation
You can take action on behalf of your organization, showing that your organization is committed towards patient safety.
Advisory Board Members
Ms. Karen Alparce-Villanueva
Mr. Amrahi Buang
Ms. Dhanya Wijesuriya
Dr Abhinav Vaidya, MD PhD
Ms. Ranjit Kaur Pritam Singh
Ms. Arshia Bhandari
Ms. Orajitt Bumrungskulswat
Mr. Syed Mahbubul Alam Tahin
Dr. Riya Agrawal
Ms. Angie Middlehurst RSCN (UK)
Secretariat
Dr. Ratna Devi
Patient Academy for Innovation and Research, India
Bikash Prasad
Patient Academy for Innovation and Research, India
Keshav Singh
Patient Academy for Innovation and Research, India
Mugdha Barik
Patient Academy for Innovation and Research, India
Key Facts
Medication errors
Medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems: globally, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at US$ 42 billion annually.
Surgical Errors
Unsafe surgical care procedures cause complications in up to 25% of patients. Almost 7 million surgical patients suffer significant complications annually, 1 million of whom die during or immediately following surgery.
Hospital Acquired Infections
Health care-associated infections occur in 7 and 10 out of every 100 hospitalized patients in high-income countries and low- and middle-income countries respectively.
Unsafe Injection Practices
Unsafe injections practices in health care settings can transmit infections, including HIV and hepatitis B and C, and pose direct danger to patients and health care workers; they account for a burden of harm estimated at 9.2 million years of life lost to disability and death worldwide (known as Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs)).
Diagnostic Errors
Diagnostic errors occur in about 5% of adults in outpatient care settings, more than half of which have the potential to cause severe harm. Most people will suffer a diagnostic error in their lifetime.
Radiation Errors
Radiation errors involve overexposure to radiation and cases of wrong-patient and wrong-site identification. A review of 30 years of published data on safety in radiotherapy estimates that the overall incidence of errors is around 15 per 10 000 treatment courses.
Advocate Speaks
Higher the risk, the more cautious the work practice has to be. It is like sending a one eyed worker into a high risk situation without eye protection. Any accident will blind him. English common law Paris v Stepney Borough Council .
Polypharmacy often compromises medication safety as there is a higher risk of adverse drug interactions . Multiple co morbidities add on to this effect. It is a combined responsibility of the physicians, nurses, pharmacists and the patients themselves to ensure that the adverse events and medication errors are avoided through proper communication.
Co-creation with patients at all levels, including system-level policies and even ever-growing digital health innovation, is essential in tackling polypharmacy. Assessing where you are is the first step to creating awareness by partnering with community organizations and patient advocates that are focused on health equity, like PFPS US, clearing blocks in health policies that bar pharmacists from practicing with the full ability of licenses with a focus on education on deprescribing and collaborating with other specialties and disciplines, and ensuring feedback loop from patients and users at all levels by improving reporting system with cultural humility and empathy in practices will be the keys in making impactful and lasting change. Remember to change your individual ‘system’ before advocating for others to change!
Good and successful transition of care requires coproduction of health rather than management of disease
Ideally, patients with comorbidities need a multidisciplinary specialist team collaborating on treatment decisions. But healthcare systems are designed for single-disease interventions. Therefore, educating patients about accurate medication use and potential side effects becomes critical to patient safety and positive outcomes.
The roles of pharmacists as guardian of medicines in prescribing, preparing and dispensing processes will enhance medication safety for the patients
Medication monitoring play a very important aspect of patient safety commitment. Patient should be monitored for both adverse drug effects as well as improvement effects after medication administration. Failure to establish this monitoring mechanism can lead to considerable patient harm and morbidity
Medication Safety is an Essential Component of Total Clinical Medicine. In today's healthcare and more so in the future; this will begin with precision clinical profiling, advance planning and negotiating health safety through a person's clinical journey. Hard-Work and Leadership in promoting a No-Blame Culture is the need of the hour!