On 17 September 2020, the World Health Organization, international partners and all countries celebrates World Patient Safety Day. The theme for 2020 is “Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety”.
The overall objectives of World Patient Safety Day are to enhance global understanding of patient safety, increase public engagement in the safety of health care and promote global actions to enhance patient safety and reduce patient harm. The origin of the Day is firmly grounded in the fundamental principle of medicine – First, do no harm.
According to WHO, 134 million adverse events occur each year due to unsafe care in hospitals in low- and middle-income countries, contributing to 2.6 million deaths annually. 4 out of 10 patients are harmed in the primary and ambulatory settings; up to 80% of harm in these settings can be avoided
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the huge challenges health workers are currently facing globally. Working in stressful environments exacerbates safety risks for health workers, including being infected and contributing to outbreaks in the health care facility, having limited access or adherence to personal protective equipment and other infection prevention and control measures, and inducing errors which can potentially harm patients and health workers. In many countries, health workers are facing increased risks of infections, violence, accidents, stigma, illness and death.
Below are some of the patient safety situations causing most concern;
Medication errors
Health care-associated infections
Unsafe surgical care procedures
Unsafe injections practices
Diagnostic errors
Unsafe transfusion practices
Radiation errors
Sepsis
Venous thromboembolism (blood clots)
Objectives of World Patient Safety Day 2020:
Raise global awareness about the importance of health worker safety and its inter-
linkages with patient safety
Engage multiple stakeholders and adopt multimodal strategies to improve the safety
of health workers and patients
Implement urgent and sustainable actions by all stakeholders which recognize and
invest in the safety of health workers, as a priority for patient safety
Provide due recognition of health workers’ dedication and hard work, particularly
amid the current fight against COVID-19
