King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) celebrated Patient Safety Day here Monday with special events including lectures, contests and exhibitions. Dr. Ramzy Abu Zahriah, Assistant Director of Quality Management at KFSH, said that the theme of the day was “Standard of Patient Safety: Communicate Effectively”.
“If we are not promoting patient safety that means we are not providing good quality care,” said Abu Zahriah.
According to the Joint Commission International Accreditation – a medical accreditation and certification body – poor communication is the main cause of sentinel events, which is defined as an unexpected occurrence involving death or major permanent loss of function unrelated to the natural cause of a patient’s illness.
Even in the United States, 44,000 patients die yearly because of medical errors, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine, an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public.
“So we all know that medical errors happen and we have to do lots of things to make sure that this isn’t happening here and one way to do this is education. So this activity is one of the educational tools where we involve everybody by using kits, and shows, and walk around the units,” said Abu Zahriah.
Dr. Sandy Lovering, Chief of Nursing at KFSHRC, said the day is a hospital-wide effort to highlight how to keep patients safe from harm. She said this was being done because it is often a complicated process that involved errors, when a person goes to see a doctor and has tests.
“As health care workers we need to be sure that we follow very clear procedure and we are aware all the time of patient safety,” said Lovering.
“We are here to tell health workers to always think about keeping patients safe from mistakes and also to inform patients of what types of things they can do to help keep themselves safe,” she added.
JASSIM ALGHAMDI
Saudi Gazette