World Patient Safety Day 2022 – healing media
- The European Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) fully supports the WHO Medicines without harm campaign
- Recommendations to reduce harm caused by medicines were part of the 2010 global ESAIC patient safety project “Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anesthesiology”, which has since been signed by 94 countries.
- Other societal initiatives provide a broad response, including a key patient safety education program Safer care saves lives
- ESAIC also creates “peer-to-peer” networks for connectivity anesthesiologists and critical care physicians to share important information and experiences related to patient safety
WHO’s World Patient Safety Day in 2022 (Saturday 17 September) focuses on improving drug safety. The European Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) fully supports this initiative and highlights that it first promoted medication safety in 2010 as part of its “Declaration of Helsinki on patient safety in anesthesiology”, signed by all national anesthesiology societies in Europe and many countries outside Europe.
Initiatives to further promote medication safety have been made by ESAIC and its sister organization, the European Association of Anesthesiology, after the Declaration of Helsinki, e.g. through publications European Journal of Anesthesiology.
According to the WHO, harms caused by medicines make up 50% of all preventable harms in medical care. Additionally, $42 billion in global health care costs can be avoided if medication errors are prevented.
Commenting on the WHO initiative, Dr David Whitaker, European Board of Anesthesiology (EBA) representative on the ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee and Chair of the EBA Patient Safety Committee, Manchester UK, commented: “There is great potential to reduce and eliminate human error in medication safety by having better safer, end-user-friendly medicinal products than pharmacy purchases, by avoiding products that look and sound the same, which can easily be confused with others, by using ready-made pre-filled syringes, and by standardizing work surfaces and medication processes.
He adds: “The key factors that ESAIC would like to emphasize are that the manipulation of medicines in clinical areas should be minimized to avoid errors – ideally medicines should already be ready and require no further intervention by staff. Injectable medicines should be presented as pre-filled syringes, pre-labeled or other ready-to-administer preparations whenever possible.”
“All drugs prepared for routine use in anesthesia, intensive care, critical emergency medicine and painkillers must be clearly labeled. In addition, when drugs are drawn into syringes, they should always be labeled immediately after filling, before they leave the user’s hands. Empty syringes should never be labeled. Together, these measures would reduce much of the avoidable medication side effects that we unfortunately still see with injectable drugs.
While ESAIC welcomes the WHO Patient Safety Initiative, the society emphasizes that this is only one part of the overall patient safety picture and points to several other initiatives it has launched to improve all aspects of the patient safety continuum. Patient safety is a key part of ESAIC’s core strategy: the society is committed to improving the patient experience during their care and reducing unnecessary harm wherever it occurs.
ESAICs Safer care saves lives the project is a comprehensive patient safety training package for anesthesiologists, healthcare professionals, hospital management and patients, guided by the society’s patient safety and quality committee in collaboration with industry partners. The project was born as a result of extensive research. It is based on the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, the consensus statement of the multi-society patient safety summit to be organized in the European Parliament in 2020, and the Declaration of Helsinki. WHO Multiprofessional Patient Safety Curriculum.
ESAIC’s Dr Jannicke Mellin-Olsen (Member of ESAIC’s Patient Safety and Quality Committee and Past President, World Federation of Anesthesiologists) said: “Patient safety training allows all healthcare professionals to contribute their knowledge and experience to ensure that no patient is harmed when they trust their medical team to protect their lives and health when they are most vulnerable during our care.”
Recommendations for this new safety project also came from the patient safety summit convened by ESAIC in 2020. At the summit, ESAIC led cooperation with major European medical organizations to bring patient safety to the EU Parliament. The result was “Multidisciplinary and patient-centred approaches to perioperative patient safety: a European consensus statement”.
Safer care saves lives includes a series of eLearning modules for beginners. The second part is the Advanced Patient Safety Course, a unique course leading to a diploma in patient safety, which will take place in Amsterdam on 19 and 20 September, immediately after World Patient Safety Day (the course is completely sold out). In addition, there is an annual Patient Safety and Quality Masterclass – a more in-depth, interactive experience spanning 3 days; and the annual Anesthesia and Intensive Care Crisis Simulation Master Course, which helps to improve compliance with the key requirements of the Declaration of Helsinki through high-quality simulation scenarios.
The COVID-19 pandemic also thrust anesthesiologists and critical care specialists into the headlines in an unprecedented way, and all aspects of their work that were previously mostly invisible and unknown to the public suddenly entered the daily news agenda. This, together with the research on the implementation of the Declaration of Helsinki mentioned above, was the inspiration for another ESAIC project: Peer evaluation of patient safety in anesthesiology and intensive care (PRIPSAIC).
PRiPSAIC creates networks of anesthesiologists and critical care physicians both within and between countries, giving them the tools and support they need to research themselves and their peers and provide solutions for the future.
ESAIC works with industry partners, national anesthesiology and critical care societies to identify and network “champions of change” and patient safety ambassadors in hospitals in selected European countries; The project will be implemented in four countries: Lithuania, Finland, the Republic of Moldova and the Czech Republic.
PRiPSAIC trains participants in patient safety assessment using the implementation methodology and visit process used in the Helsinki Declaration follow-up project; enables the international exchange of information and experiences regarding patient safety and provides a practical “toolkit” for self-assessment of patient safety in anesthesiology departments to support the implementation of the Declaration of Helsinki. One site visit has already been done, where Lithuanian doctors visited the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland.
Professor Andrew Smith (Lancaster Patient Safety and Health Services Research Unit and representative on ESAIC’s Patient Safety and Quality Committee) said: “Every anesthetist and every department they work in has skills, knowledge and experience in patient safety. Unfortunately, too often anesthetists work in isolation. This new project is about bringing people together in the name of sharing our patient safety data.
Finally, ESAIC joins other organizations worldwide to tag #WPSD and help raise awareness of medication safety issues caused by medication errors and unsafe practices, as well as ways to improve safety standards, and is dedicated to leading the way in patient safety and ensuring the best care for every patient.
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Note to editors
About ESAIC
The European Association of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) is the leading European organization for members and national societies of anaesthesia, intensive care, pain and perioperative medicine. ESAIC aims to: promote knowledge exchange between European anesthesiologists; it acts as a center for disseminating knowledge related to anesthesiology. The society helps to raise the level of the specialty by promoting and encouraging education, research, scientific development and information exchange, and by promoting the safety and quality of care of patients under the care of anesthesiologists in and outside the operating room by facilitating and harmonizing the activities of national and international societies of anesthesiologists in Europe. In addition, ESAIC promotes the professional role of anesthesiologists in improving patient care in the fields of anesthesiology, critical care, perioperative medicine, emergency medicine, and pain medicine.
For more information, visit: https://www.esaic.org/patient-safety/
About the KOLs quoted in this PR
- Dr David Whitaker, ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee (Chair, EBA Patient Safety Committee, Manchester UK. Send an email to schedule an interview. D) [email protected]
- Dr. Jannicke Mellin-Olsen, ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee; University of Trondheim, Norway; and Immediate Past President of the World Federation of Anesthesiological Societies. Send an email to schedule an interview. D) [email protected] / [email protected]
- Professor Andrew Smith, ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee; consultant anesthetist at University Hospitals Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust and director of the Lancaster Patient Safety Research Unit at Lancaster University, is not available for interview as he is currently on holiday.
For more information, please contact:
Tony Kirby, Tony Kirby PR T) +44 7834 385827 E) [email protected]
Sources:
- WHO patient safety pages and WHO World Patient Safety Day campaign Medicines without harm https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-patient-safety-day/2022
- Recommendations for safe medication practice from the European Board of Anesthesiology as published in EJA
- European Consensus Statement (note, ESAIC was previously known as ESA, until 2020)
- Declaration of Helsinki on patient safety in anesthesiology and signatory countries
- Safer care saves lives
- PRiPSAIC
- WHO Multiprofessional Patient Safety Curriculum