Dear HIFA colleagues,
Hello, on behalf of the Spotlight working group I would like to introduce the first guiding question in our discussion:
Q1. What is unsafe care and what is its local and global impact?
WHO defines patient safety as 'the absence of preventable harm to a patient and reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care to an acceptable minimum'. By extension, unsafe care involves the presence of avoidable, preventable harm or the failure to reduce the risk of unnecessary harm during healthcare delivery. Fact sheet: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/patient-safety
WHO estimates that 'Around 1 in every 10 patients is harmed in health care and more than 3 million deaths occur annually due to unsafe care. In low-to-middle income countries, as many as 4 in 100 people die from unsafe care'. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/patient-safety
We encourage you to look at the above WHO fact sheet which provides an overview of patient safety and its impact, including common sorces of patient harm, factors leading to patient harm, system approach to patient safety, and the WHO response.
We also refer to the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030, which provides a framework for action for key stakeholders to join efforts and implement patient safety initiatives in a comprehensive manner. The goal is “to achieve the maximum possible reduction in avoidable harm due to unsafe health care globally”, envisioning “a world in which no one is harmed in health care, and every patient receives safe and respectful care, every time, everywhere”. https://www.who.int/teams/integrated-health-services/patient-safety/poli...
In terms of local impact, we especially encourage all of us to share any personal experience of unsafe care or patient harm, whether in primary, secondary or tertiary health care. This could be from your perspective as a health worker or as a patient or family member. As health workers we have almost certainly had experience of unsafe care. We are all patients and, as described above, at least 1 in 10 of us will have been harmed by unsafe care. In a previous Spotlight on Group B Strep, for example, we heard the moving testimonies of mothers whose babies had died or were severaly damaged by unsafe care. (www.hifa.org/gbs)
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org