World Patient Safety Day

Each year 9 December marks the World Patient Safety Day. The World Health Organisation (WHO) launched this day in 2005 to increase the awareness of unsafe healthcare. The purpose of Patient Safety Day is to revolutionise high level support and commitment to tackle patient safety issues in all parts of the world.

Patient safety is a healthcare discipline that emphasises the reporting, analysis, and prevention of medical errors that often lead to adverse healthcare events. Statistical reports show that healthcare errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world. It is for this reason that the World Health Organisation (WHO) calls patient safety an endemic concern.

Patient safety is a fundamental principle of health care. Every point in the process of care-giving contains a certain degree of inherent unsafety. Adverse events may result from problems in practice, products, procedures or systems. Patient safety improvements demand a complex system-wide effort, involving a wide range of actions in performance improvement, environmental safety and risk management, including infection control, safe use of medicines, equipment safety, safe clinical practice and safe environment of care.

On Patient Safety Day we ask you to educate yourselves on patient safety and issues related to it.

At GEMS, we care about the health and care of all our members. We therefore encourage you to get the information you need about your procedure, doctor and hospital/clinic prior to receiving treatment.

Sources
World Patient Safety Day: http://www.gov.za/world-patient-safety-day
Patient safety: http://www.who.int/topics/patient_safety/en/