Exploring patient participation in reducing health-care-related safety risks

ANNEX 6.
WhO pATIENT SAFETY pROGRAMME
The WHO Patient Safety Programme includes a number of activities, programmes and
campaigns that aim to coordinate, disseminate and accelerate improvements in patient
safety worldwide. Launched in 2004 in response to a 2002 World Health Assembly
resolution urging WHO and Member States to pay the closest possible attention to
the problem of patient safety, its establishment underlined the importance of patient
safety as a global health care issue. Its main areas of work – which in Member States
that adopt them should have the potential to influence the patients’ rights agenda – have
included the action areas set out here.
Global Patient Safety Challenges
Global Patient Safety Challenges aim to identify a topic that covers a major and
significant aspect of risk to patients receiving health care and which is relevant to every
WHO Member State. Two such challenges have been launched to date by WHO, as
described below. The third challenge on Medication Safety will be initiated in 2013.
1 . “Clean Care is Safer Care”
HAI was chosen as the First Global Patient Safety Challenge, focusing on the
theme “Clean Care is Safer Care” (1). As part of this challenge, WHO guidelines
on hand hygiene in health care were developed, along with a set of complementary
implementation tools.
2 . “Safe Surgery Saves Lives”
Safer surgery was chosen as the Second Global Patient Safety Challenge, with the theme
“Safe Surgery Saves Lives” (2). The focus of the campaign is the WHO surgical safety
checklist. The checklist identifies three phases of an operation, each corresponding to a
specific period in the normal flow of work: before the induction of anaesthesia (“sign in”);
before the incision of the skin (“time out”); and before the patient leaves the operating
room (“sign out”). In each phase, a checklist coordinator must confirm that the surgical
team has completed the listed tasks before it proceeds with the operation.
3 . Medication safety
The safety of medicines is not a new area of activity for WHO, but the WHO Patient
Safety Programme will be building on positive work done in medicines regulation
and management of counterfeit medicines to develop the Third Global Patient Safety
Challenge in “Medication Safety”. This area will develop advocacy messages as well as
technical tools for improving medication safety across the spectrum of health care settings.
“Patients for Patient Safety”
In the area of patient and consumer involvement, the initiative “Patients for Patient
Safety” (3) involves building a patient-led global network of patients and patient
organizations to champion patient safety.
WHO Patient Safety Programme
163