#5 Patient Safety

EQuiP Working Group on Patient Safety
By Isabelle Dupie (France) and Andrée Rochfort (Ireland)
EQuiP Working Group Leaders on Patient Safety, incl. Professional Health

'Primum non nocere' (Do not harm) has been for more than 2500 years one of the most known principles of medicine. Already in the Greek period and from then on, for ages, doing no harm to the patient has been the priority of doctors. In 1999 the IOM Institute published its report ‘to err is human: Building a safer health system’ and now 25 years later the topic still is very important. It is a cornerstone of a health system of high quality. A lot of reports have been published since then, many of them about hospital care.
 

The 49th EQuiP Assembly Meeting held in April 2016 in Prague was themed 'Patient Safety in General Practice'. Further, the 51st EQuiP Assembly Meeting held in March 2017 in Dublin was themed 'Patient Safety in General Practice'. 

Media and Resources

WHO and Patient Safety

Universal coverage has become a priority goal for the World Health Organization (WHO) and its Member States, and providing accessible and safe primary care is essential towards meeting that goal.

The WHO Patient Safety Programme has initiated the "Safer Primary Care" project whose goal is to advance the understanding and knowledge about:

  • The risks to patients in primary care
  • The magnitude and nature of the preventable harm due to unsafe practices in these settings
  • Safe mechanisms to protect primary care patients

Read much more about 'Safer Primary Care' here.