The Patient Safety Movement Foundation – PSMF is a global non-profit foundation whose mission is to eliminate preventable medical errors.

According to PSMF, Adverse Events (AE) are responsible for approximately 4.8 million deaths per year worldwide, which is equivalent to 125 thousand deaths per year in Brazil.

In 1999, through the report To err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, attention was paid for the first time to the impact and consequences of medical errors.

In 2012, the PSMF was born and by 2013 the movement was comprised of hospital CEOs, patient advocates and government leaders to identify key challenges and provide patient safety across healthcare.

In 2019, at the 7th World Patient Safety Summit, it was announced that more than 90,146 lives per year had been saved thanks to commitments made by more than 4,710 partner hospitals in 50 countries.

Based on these figures, it became clear that one of the movement’s visions, to reach ZERO preventable deaths in healthcare, would be a real challenge.

 

OBJECTIVES OF THE FOUNDATION

To provide information for the safety of patients and healthcare professionals, to mobilize and unite the entire world population around this issue, and to achieve zero deaths per year due to medical errors.

It will be necessary to make the issue of patient safety part of the culture of individuals and hospitals, and safer outcomes are necessary:

 

  • Patients at the center of care;
  • Dignity and respect in healthcare;
  • Unity and alignment of healthcare influencers;
  • Transparency;
  • Safer healthcare;
  • Effective communication with patients, caregivers and family members about patient safety;
  • Identifying preventable causes of patient harm and death and creating solutions to mitigate and share them for free;
  • Implementation of Actionable Patient Safety Solutions (APSS);
  • Use of patient data sharing technologies.

In the last quarter of 2020 the PSMF, published a report confirming that the problems in the Healthcare System are systemic and that errors will occur.

The high level of stress for all, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, has led to a reflection on these shortcomings in the Health Systems.

The high strain on resources and on healthcare providers demonstrates that the problems pre-date the pandemic and that the current healthcare situation has contributed to exposing more circumstances that contribute to medical errors.

This demonstrates that there is a need to plan ways to teach and prepare the population about Patient Safety issues.

 

CONCLUSION

It has been two decades since the first report that introduced the world to this important topic of Patient Safety.

But until we see the many situations in healthcare that offer valuable lessons about the importance of Patient Safety for individuals and for the system, we will not be able to eliminate preventable patient deaths in healthcare by 2030, one of the goals of the PSMF.

COVID-19 is destroying thousands of lives and families, but for many years preventable deaths in hospitals have also claimed lives and destroyed families, yet never received the care they needed.

It is very important to focus on this issue, because everyone, at some point in their lives, will be a patient. And armed with the right information they will be able to demand quality, safety and proper healthcare.

Pharmacist Daniela Faria