World Patient Safety Day 2020: Interesting Facts and Objectives of Patient Safety by WHO

World Patient Safety Day was seen as an international day by the World Health Organization (WHO) on September 17 as a global campaign ‘Medication without Harm’. Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety has, thusly, been selected as the theme for World Patient Safety Day 2020, which focuses on the interrelationship between health worker safety and patient safety, portrayed in the slogan ‘Safe health workers, Safe patients’.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the gigantic challenges and risks health workers are confronting universally including healthcare-related diseases, viciousness, stigma, mental and emotional aggravations, ailment, and even death. Besides, working in upsetting conditions makes health workers more inclined to mistakes which can prompt patient mischief.

What is patient safety?

Patient safety is the nonattendance of preventable harm to a patient during the healthcare process and decrease of the danger of superfluous damage related to healthcare to a satisfactory least. ‘Acceptable minimum’ refers to the aggregate thought of given current information, resources accessible, and the context in which care was delivered weighed against the danger of non-treatment or other treatment.

Why is Patient Safety Important?

The idea of International Patient Safety Day is to diminish the diseases patients need to confront while getting treated in a hospital. As indicated by the WHO in developed countries around 1 out of 10 patients are influenced by sicknesses while getting their treatment at a hospital. In under-developed and developing nations this ratio goes up. World Patient Safety Day centers around the decrease of these events by defining feasible goals that can help in guaranteeing the patient’s safety while at the same time getting a treatment in a hospital.

What is World Patient Safety Day about?

Perceiving patient safety as a global health priority, each of the 194 WHO the Member States at the 72nd World Health Assembly, in May 2019, embraced the foundation of World Patient Safety Day (Resolution WHA72.6), to be marked annually on 17 September. The objectives of World Patient Safety Day are to raise public awareness and engagement, upgrade global comprehension, and spike global solidarity and activity to promote patient safety.

The overall objectives of World Patient Safety Day are to improve global understanding of patient safety, enhance public engagement in the safety of health care, and elevate global activities to upgrade patient safety and diminish patient damage. The origin of the Day is immovably grounded in the crucial guideline of medication – First, not harm.

The COVID-19 pandemic is presently among the greatest challenges and risks to confront the world and humankind, and health care is living is experiencing its most noteworthy emergency inpatient safety ever! The pandemic has applied remarkable pressure on health systems around the world. Health systems can just function with health workers, and a learned, skilled, and motivated health workforce is basic for the provision of safe care to patients.

Objectives of World Patient Safety Day 2020:

• Increase global awareness about the significance of health worker safety and its interlinkages with patient safety

• Engage various stakeholders and receive multimodal systems to improve the safety of health workers and patients

• Execute urgent and sustainable activities by all partners which perceive and invest in the safety of health workers, as a priority for patient safety

• Give due acknowledgment of health workers’ contribution and hard work, especially during the current battle against COVID-19

Call for action

WHO encourages all stakeholders to “Speak up for health worker safety!”

The COVID-19 pandemic has featured the enormous challenges health workers are presently confronting internationally. Working in upsetting environments worsens dangers for health workers, including being contaminated and adding to outbreaks in the health care facility, having restricted admittance or adherence to personal protective equipment and other disease prevention and control measures, and initiating mistakes which can conceivably harm patients and health workers. In numerous nations, health workers are confronting expanded threats of contaminations, brutality, mishaps, stigma, ailment, and demise.

10 facts on patient safety

Patient safety is a genuine global public health concern. It is assessed that there is a 1 in 3 million danger of dying while traveling via airplane. In the examination, the danger of patient demise happening because of a preventable medical accident, while getting health care, is assessed to be 1 in 300. Industries with an apparent higher danger, for example, the avionics and nuclear industries, have a greatly improved safety record than health care does.

1. One in every 10 patients is injured while admitting hospital care

Appraisals show that in high-income nations, upwards of one out of 10 patients is hurt while accepting hospital care. The damage can be brought about by a range of adverse events, with almost half of them thought about preventable.

An examination of the frequency and preventability of adverse events across 26 hospitals in eight low and middle-income nations, demonstrated the adverse event rate to be around 8%. Of these events, 83% were preventable, while about 30% were related to the death of the patient.

2. The event of adverse events because of perilous consideration is likely one of the 10 leading reasons for death and handicap over the world

The event of adverse events, coming about because of perilous consideration, is probably going to be one of the 10 leading reasons for death and handicap around the world. Recent proof recommends that 134 million adverse events happen every year because of hazardous consideration in hospitals in low-and middle-income nations (LMICs), bringing about 2.6 million deaths every year.

Another investigation has assessed that around 66% of all adverse events coming about because of risky consideration, and the years lost to disability and passing (known as handicap adjusted life years, or DALYs), happen in LMICs.

3. Four out of every 10 patients are injured in primary and outpatient health care

The provision of safe services is critical overall degrees of health care, remembering for essential and outpatient (ambulatory) care, where the bulk of services are allowed. All around the world, upwards of four out of 10 patients are hurt while getting health care in these settings, with up to 80% of the mischief considered to have been preventable. The most detrimental mistakes are identified with diagnosis, remedy, and the use of medicines.

The harm in primary and ambulatory care regularly brings about hospitalization. It has been discovered, that across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations, patient harm may represent over 6% of hospital bed days and more than 7 million admissions.

4. At least 1 out of each 7 Canadian dollars is spent treating the impacts of patient harm in-hospital care

At least 1 out of each 7 Canadian dollars is spent treating the impacts of patient harm in-hospital care. Recent proof shows that 15% of complete hospital expenditure and activities in the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations is an immediate aftereffect of adverse events, with the most burdensome events being blood clots (venous thromboembolism), bedsores (pressure ulcers) and diseases.

It is assessed that the complete expense of harm in these nations alone adds up to trillions of US dollars every year.

5. Investment in patient safety can prompt huge financial savings

Investment in improving patient safety can prompt huge financial savings and all the more critically better patient results. This is because the expense of prevention is commonly much lower than the expense of treatment because of harm. For instance, in the United States alone, engaged security upgrades prompted an expected US$ 28 billion in savings in Medicare hospitals somewhere in the range of 2010 and 2015.

More noteworthy patient engagement is the key to safer care. Engaging patients isn’t costly and represents a decent worth. Whenever progressed nicely, it can decrease the burden of damage by up to 15%, saving billions of dollars every year–an awesome rate of investment.

6. Unsafe medication practices and medication mistakes hurt a great many patients and costs billions of US dollars every year

Perilous medicine practices and blunders –, for example, inaccurate dosages or infusions, unclear instructions, use of abbreviations, and wrong prescriptions – are the main source of avoidable harm in health care around the world. Globally, the expense related to medication errors has been assessed at US$ 42 billion every year, not including lost wages, productivity, or health care costs. This represents nearly 1% of global expenditure on health.

Medicine errors may happen when weak medication systems or potentially human factors, for example, fatigue, helpless working conditions, or staff deficiencies influence prescribing, storage, preparation, dispensing, administration, and monitoring practices. Anyone or a combination of these can bring about serious patient harm, handicap, and even death.

7. Inaccurate or deferred diagnosis is one of the most well-known causes of patient harm and influences a large number of patients

Diagnostic error, that is the inability to distinguish the nature of an ailment in an exact and ideal way, happens in about 5% of grown-ups in the United States outpatient care settings. About half of these errors can cause serious damage. An investigation of primary care clinics in Malaysia built up the event of diagnostic errors at 3.6%.

In the United States, broad autopsy research acted in the previous decades has indicated that diagnostic errors add to around 10% of patient deaths. Besides, medical record surveys exhibit that diagnostic errors represent 6–17% of all unsafe events in hospitals.

Proof from low-and middle-income nations is restricted, nonetheless, it is assessed that the rate is higher than in high-income nations as the diagnostic process is contrarily affected by factors, for example, restricted admittance to care and diagnostic testing resources.

8. Hospital infections influence up to 10 out of every 100 hospitalized patients

Out of every 100 hospitalized patients, at some random time, seven in high-income nations and 10 in low-and middle-income nations will secure at least one healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Countless patients overall are influenced by HAIs every year.

Individuals with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium progressively found in hospital settings that is impervious to most antibiotics, are assessed to be 64% more likely to die than individuals with a non-resistant form of the infection.

Notwithstanding a nation’s income level, various types of interventions, including suitable hand hygiene, can lessen HAI rates by up to 55%.

9. More than 1 million patients die every year from complications because of surgery

Discoveries by WHO proposes that, internationally, surgery brings about high rates of disease, illness, and death. Dangerous surgical care methodology cause intricacies in up to 25% of patients. Just about 7 million surgical patients suffer significant complications every year, 1 million of whom die during or quickly following surgery.

Because of improved patient safety measures, deaths identified with complications from surgery have diminished in the previous 50 years. All things considered, they stay a few times higher in low and middle-income nations than in high-income nations.

10. Medical exposure to radiation is a public health and patient safety concern

Around the world, there are more than 3.6 billion x-ray examinations played out each year, with around 10% of them happening in kids. Also, there are more than 37 million nuclear medication and 7.5 million radiotherapy strategies every year. Unseemly or unskilled use of medical radiation can prompt health risks, both for patients and staff.

Radiation mistakes include overexposure to radiation and cases of wrong-patient or wrong-site identification. An audit of 30 years of published information on safety in radiotherapy predicts that the general occurrence of errors is around 15 for every 10 000 treatment courses.