Published 29 June 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b2585
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b2585

Analysis

Breaking the mould in patient safety

¹ Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS), 2 avenue du Stade de France, 93218 Saint-Denis La Plaine Cedex, France

To achieve real improvements in patient safety we need to look at the whole of patients’ care not just specific procedures, argue Laurent Degos and colleagues

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Patient safety currently revolves around hospital inpatients and has two approaches: adoption of well structured, standardised, evidence based treatment and a safe culture system (reporting, cooperation, etc) with checks and safeguards to reduce the occurrence of medical errors and adverse events. The aim is to avoid and prevent adverse events or injury through health care and to improve overall care.¹ However, despite these interventions, almost 10% of hospital patients experience an adverse event and about 40% of events are preventable.^{2 3}

These high rates would doubtless be higher if out of hospital risks were included. We believe that the best way to reduce in-hospital risks is to start by reducing out of hospital risks that result in hospital admission. We argue that the current scope of patient safety is too restricted and should be extended to cover all obstacles to timely access to appropriate care.

Current safety interventions are evaluated using . . . [Full text of this article]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Amalberti, R., Bruneau, C., Desplanques, A., Degos, L. (2009). Viewing the safety imperative from the French policy perspective. Qual Saf Health Care 18: 420-421 [Full text]  

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