Patient safety is defined by the World Health Organisation as "…an event or circumstance that could have resulted, or did result, in unnecessary harm to a patient" (WHO 2011, p81).

The concept of unnecesary harm is an important one in patient safety. During the course of everday care and treatment helathcare staff do cause harm to patient/clients; as examples we stick needles in them, give them drugs that have side effects and cut them open with knife during surgery. For as long as those harms have a health benefit they are necessary harms, but when we stick the needle in the wrong patient, give the wrong drug or operate on the wrong patient they are patient safety incidents - unnecessary harm.

It should also be noted that the World Health Organisation are making it clear that a near miss, where an incident could have led to unecessary harm to a patient/client, is still a patient safety incident.

WHO Patient Safety Curriculum Guide

This guide, published in 2011, is an attempt by the World Health organisation to encourage and promote education in patient safetty across the multidisciplinary team. Copies of the guide can be obtained at the WHO curriculum Guide link.

• 1. What is patient safety?
• 2. Why applying human factors is important for patient safety
• 3. Understanding systems and the effect of complexity on care
• 4. Being an effective team player
• 5. Learning from errors to prevent harm
• 6. Understanding and managing clinical risk
• 7. Using quality-improvement methods to improve care
• 8. Engaging with patients and carers
• 9. Infection prevention and control
• 10. Patient safety and invasive procedures
• 11. Improving medication safety

(WHO 2011)

WHO Surgical Safety Checklist

Another important initiative from the World Health Organisation is the Surgical Safety Checklist. The WHO has produced guidance on a surgical checklist for use in theatres, in a number of languages, in an attemopt to reduce the amount of wrong site and wrong eprson surgery that continues to occur in healthcare. That guidance can be found at this site (WHO Surgical Safery Checklist).

Other WHO patient safety initiatives

For further information on World Health Organisation intiatives in patient safety go to thi site (WHO, Patient Safety).