A Patient Safety Movement Foundation – PSMF is a global, non-profit foundation with a mission to eliminate preventable medical errors.
According to the PSMF itself, Adverse Events (AEs) are responsible for approximately 4,8 million of deaths per year worldwide, this number 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 impacts and consequences of medical errors.
In 2012, the PSMF was born and in 2013 the movement was already composed of hospital CEOs, patient advocates and government leaders in order to identify the main challenges and provide safety for patients in all health care.
In 2019 at the 7th World Patient Safety Summit, more than 90.146 lives saved per year due to commitments made for more than 4.710 hospitals partners in 50 countries.
From these numbers, it was possible to see that one of the movement's visions, of reaching ZERO preventable deaths in healthcare, would be quite challenging.
Foundation Objectives
Provide information for the safety of patients and healthcare professionals, mobilize and unite the entire population of the world on this issue, and achieve zero deaths per year due to medical errors.
The issue of patient safety will need to be part of the culture of people and hospitals and for safer results it is necessary to:
- Patients in the spotlight
- Dignity and respect in health
- Uniting and aligning healthcare influencers
- Transparency
- Safer healthcare
- Effective communication with patients, caregivers and families about patient safety
- Identifying preventable causes of patient harm and death and creating solutions to mitigate them and sharing them freely
- Implementation of Solutions Patient safety Actionable (APSS)
- Use of technologies to share patient data.
In the last quarter of 2020, Patient Safety Movement Foundation – PSMF, published a report which confirmed that the problems in the Health System are systemic and that mistakes will happen.
The high level of stress experienced by everyone due to the Coronavirus pandemic has led to reflection on these gaps in the Health Systems.
The great pressure on resources and healthcare providers shows that the problems existed before the pandemic and that the current situation in healthcare has contributed to exposing more circumstances that contribute to medical errors.
This proves how necessary it is to plan ways to teach and prepare the population regarding Patient Safety issues.
Conclusion
It has been two decades since the first report that introduced this important issue of Patient Safety to the world.
But, while not see the different situations in health care, which offer valuable lessons about Importance of Patient Safety to individuals and the system, it will not be possible to eliminate preventable patient deaths in the health area by 2030, one of the goals of PSMF.
COVID-19 has destroyed thousands of lives and families, but for many years preventable deaths in hospitals have also taken lives and destroyed families, but they have never received the attention they deserve.
It is very important to focus on this topic, because everyone will be a patient at some point in their life. And with the correct information, they will be able to request quality, safety and adequate health care.
Read more about Patient safety: Click Here
