Since the pandemic, there has been a decline in patient safety culture. So, what does this mean?
This past 17th of September 2022 was World Patient Safety Day.?This annual campaign is led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and calls for collaboration and action from all healthcare stakeholders around the world to demonstrate their commitment to patient safety.???
A recent report from our research partner, Press Ganey, showed a decline in patient safety culture since the start of the pandemic, with 60% of US safety events captured in 2021, consisting of three main areas:
Medication Safety was the theme for this year’s World Patient Safety Day, which builds on the WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm, which launched in March 2017 with the aim to reduce severe, avoidable, medication-related harm by 50% globally by 2025 (see Figure 1 below).?
Figure 1. The WHO Strategic Framework of the Global Patient Safety Challenge depicts the four domains of the Challenge: 1) patients and the public, 2) health care professionals, 3) medicines and systems and 4) practices of medication, and three key action areas being: 1) polypharmacy, 2) high-risk situations, and 3) transitions of care.??
The Australian Government Department of Health engaged the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) to develop Australia’s response to the challenge.?The Commission released Australia’s response in 2020 and refined the three key action areas to an Australian context, being: 1) monitoring polypharmacy and responding to inappropriate polypharmacy, 2) reducing harm from high-risk medicines, and 3) improving medication safety at transitions of care.?
When patients transition from one care setting to another, there’s increased potential for mistakes, miscommunication and misunderstanding around their medications, especially when there have been changes.?
"Up to 90% of people may experience a change to their medicines while in hospital"
When analysing our 2022 data from hospitals in the Asia Pacific region using the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey (HCAHPS), the Communication About Medication section and Care Transitions domains were lower scoring than other domains.?
The lowest scoring HCAHPS item was “Before giving you any new medicine, how often did hospital staff describe possible side effects in a way you could understand?”
When we reviewed the questions “staff told the patient what the medicine was for” and "patient understood the purpose of taking the medicine", we saw a difference of more than 10% between the top box results (% always) for these items:?
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APAC region score ranges
This is in line with international benchmarks, which showed a 15.7% difference between these items:
Across the Asian pacific region, we see common themes in inpatient comments around medication including errors and risk of errors in medication prescribing, dispensing and administration, as well as lack of information and communication issues:
This year the WHO organised a virtual event to unite all stakeholders in a joint discussion on Medication Without Harm and to share practical tools and resources developed to assist global efforts to reduce medication-related harm.?Two key WHO tools for patients, families, caregivers and health professionals are their Five Moments for Medication Safety and Know. Check. Ask. resources (interpretations are available in multiple languages).??
Did your organisation engage in World Patient Safety Day? What are you doing to improve patient safety?
Learn more about how Insync can support your organisation to minimise patient harm with a positive safety culture. Click here.
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