Patient safety in health systems around the world

In health systems around the world, patient safety is a priority. At the 72nd World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization, held on 28 May 2019, Member States were urged to:

1) “Recognizing patient safety as a health priority in health sector policies and programs and making it an essential component for strengthening health care systems with the aim of achieving universal health coverage.”

2) “Assessing and measuring the nature and magnitude of a patient safety problem, including risks, errors, adverse events, and harm to patients at all levels of health service delivery, particularly through information reporting systems.”

3) “Develop and implement national policies, laws, strategies, guidelines and tools, and allocate adequate resources in order to enhance the security of all health services, as appropriate.”

The Director General of the said organization is required to:

12) “Develop a global patient safety action plan, in consultation with Member States and all relevant stakeholders, including the private sector.”

In compliance with the above and in compliance with national regulations, the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS), under the instructions of the Director General, Maestro Zoe Robledo, has undertaken the task of developing different strategies and lines of action directly linked to the institutional programme.

The Institutional Plan for Quality and Patient Safety Professionalism is designed. There is also the Institutional Event Recording System (SIRE), from which information on adverse events, sentinel events, and near misses is obtained.

The culture of quality and safety must be based on a system of continuous improvement based on learning from mistakes and/or negative events. It is extremely important to obtain timely and reliable information for the preventive detection of risk factors that may increase the incidence and likelihood of a risk occurring.

The most common cause of accidents is not in individuals, but in system failures, in processes that lead people to make mistakes. When such an event occurs, the most important thing is not knowing who made the mistake, but how and why the security barriers failed.

The SIRE system enables learning from errors and thus preventing and improving the safety climate within medical units. IMSS is committed to the quality of care and safety for our patients and makes this a priority.

BY ADRIANA ARVIZU ITALY

Technical coordinator for medical risk, quality and patient safety

LSN