Patient safety and the International Patient Safety Goals

What it is

Patient safety is a new healthcare discipline that emphasizes the reporting, analysis, and prevention of medical error that often leads to adverse healthcare events. It is put in two lines: prevent medical errors, and protect the patient from harm.

What it works with is the safety solution. A safety solution is any system design or intervention that has demonstrated the ability to prevent or mitigate patient harm stemming from the processes of health care.

The six International Patient Safety Goals

The Joint Commission International set six International Patient Safety Goals, started Jan 2007:

• Goal 1: Identify patients correctly.
• Goal 2: Improve effective communication.
• Goal 3: Improve the safety of high-alert medications.
• Goal 4: Ensure correct-site, correct-procedure, correct patient surgery.
• Goal 5: Reduce the risk of health care-associated infections.
• Goal 6: Reduce the risk of patient harm resulting from falls.

Each of the ward cases in this lecture sits under one of the six.