This year, the World Health Organisation’s World Patient Safety Day, celebrated on 17^th September yearly, focused on the theme “Improving Diagnosis for Patient Safety”, with the slogan “Get it right, make it safe!”. This theme presented an important opportunity to raise public awareness and foster collaboration between patients, healthcare workers, policymakers, and leaders to improve diagnostic processes and patient safety overall.

In alignment with this theme, the NIHR Patient Safety Research Collaboration (PSRC) Network (SafetyNet) held a special webinar hosted by the NIHR Midlands PSRC, with support from the other five PSRCs. The online event, attended by 95 participants and chaired by Professor Richard Lilford, Co-Director of the NIHR Midlands PSRC, featured:

• Reflections from Baroness Gillian Merron, Minister for Patient Safety, Women’s Health, and Mental Health.
• A talk on AI in diagnostics by Professor Brendan Delaney, Chair in Medical Informatics at Imperial College London.
• A discussion on primary care diagnosis by Professor Willie Hamilton, University of Exeter.
• A presentation by Andrea Brady, mother of Jessica Brady, on Jessica Brady and the CEDAR Trust.
• Insights into the Shared Safety Action Plan (SSNAP) by Pam Essler, a Lay Leader supporting PPIE in SSNAP development.

Watch the recording now:

What is World Patient Safety Day?

World Patient Safety Day, observed annually on September 17th, is a global initiative launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise awareness about patient safety and promote actions to reduce patient harm in healthcare. Established in 2019, this day highlights the critical importance of patient safety as a global health priority and encourages collaboration among healthcare providers, patients, policymakers, and the public to improve improve patient safety worldwide.

Get it right, make it safe!

This year the theme is “Improving diagnosis for patient safety” with the slogan “Get it right, make it safe!”, highlighting the critical importance of correct and timely diagnosis in ensuring patient safety and improving health outcomes.

A diagnosis identifies a patient’s health problem, and is a key to accessing the care and treatment they need. A diagnostic error is the failure to establish a correct and timely explanation of a patient’s health problem, which can include delayed, incorrect, or missed diagnoses, or a failure to communicate that explanation to the patient.

Diagnostic safety can be significantly improved by addressing the systems-based issues and cognitive factors that can lead to diagnostic errors. Systemic factors are organizational vulnerabilities that predispose to diagnostic errors, including communication failures between health workers or health workers and patients, heavy workloads, and ineffective teamwork. Cognitive factors involve clinician training and experience as well as predisposition to biases, fatigue and stress.

WHO will continue to work with all stakeholders to prioritize diagnostic safety and adopt a multifaceted approach to strengthen systems, design safe diagnostic pathways, support health workers in making correct decisions, and engage patients throughout the entire diagnostic process.  

For more information, please refer to the World Patient Safety Day 2024 Announcement

Voices for Safety podcast

In celebration of the World Patient Safety Day, the NIHR Greater Manchester PSRC has launched Voices for Safety, a patient safety podcast exploring key topics ranging from medication safety and safety culture, to designing safer health and care systems and preventing suicide and self-harm. The debut episode explores the challenges and opportunities in improving diagnosis in primary care, and how to create safer healthcare systems—key priorities for this year’s World Patient Safety Day. 

Voices for Safety is available now on all major streaming platforms.

Related