Here - EWMA 2013

Key Session: Improving Patient Safety – Zero Tolerance to Pressure Ulcers
48
Key Session: Improving Patient Safety – Zero Tolerance to Pressure Ulcers
47
Patients safety in general
Zero Tolerance – UK experiences
Hamish Laing 1
Beth Lilja 1
1 Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery (Swansea, United Kingdom)
1 Danish Society for Patient Safety (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Patient safety is a relatively new health care discipline that emphasises reporting,
analysis, and prevention of medical errors, which often leads to adverse health care
events.
NOT AVAILABLE AT TIME OF PRINT
The frequency and magnitude of avoidable adverse patient events was not well known
until the 1990s, where multiple countries started reporting staggering numbers of
patients harmed and killed by medical errors. Today, the World Health Organization
refers to patient safety as an endemic concern as health care errors impact 1 in every 10
patients around the world.
Although the quality and safety movement were born in the more financial robust times
the work has never been more important than it is now. Many organisations actually see
the quality and safety work as a solution to a lot of the challenges, which we face in our
health care system today. In order to develop a sustainable and safe health care system,
several initiatives needs to be undertaken:
1. Empowerment of patients. The more informed and empowered patients are, the more
likely it is that they choose a less invasive treatment.
2. The is an urgent need to develop capability and capacity to improve work processes,
in order to deliver the right treatment to all patients 24/7. The elimination of pressure
ulcers is a good example of how the quality and safety work has developed.
3. Reduce waste and inefficiencies.
4. Eliminate unintended harm to the patients. In order to do so it is important to know
what goes wrong. An important tool for this is reporting systems. The Danish Act on
Patient Safety passed Parliament in June 2003, and on January 1, 2004, Denmark
became the first country to introduce nation-wide mandatory reporting. The reporting
system is intended purely for learning and frontline personnel cannot experience
sanctions for reporting.
The talk will focus on these above-mentioned issues and examples of how these have
been implemented will be demonstrated.
KEY SESSION: IMPROVING PATIENT SAFETY – ZERO TOLERANCE TO PRESSURE ULCERS
EWMA 2013
COPENHAGEN
15-17 May · 2013
Danish Wound
Healing Society
43