WHOcc

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Introduction:

“The aim of the Global Patient Safety Challenge on Medication Safety is to strengthen medication safety by improving the health systems that minimize medication-related harm by 50%, globally in the next 5 years. “The third WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm will propose solutions to address many of the obstacles the world faces today to ensure the safety of medication practices. WHO's goal is to achieve widespread engagement and commitment of WHO Member States and professional bodies around the world to reducing the harm associated with medication"

In healthcare systems throughout the world, unsafe medication practices and medication errors are the primary sources of avoidable harm. Low-and middle-income countries experience this harm at variable levels and in different ways—the annual cost of medication errors is estimated to be 42 billion US dollars worldwide⁴. The Saudi Patient Safety Center (SPSC)- WHOcc on Patient Safety Policies and Strategies working with experts, partners, and WHO-EMRO to deliver training activity series to support the WHO Global Patient Safety initiatives with a focus on Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), and one of the five strategic activities assigned to SPSC-WHOcc is Medication Without Harm, in alignment with the 3rd WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge.

Aim: In alignment with the 3rd WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge Medication without Harm, this working activity aims to educate healthcare professionals about the importance of medication reconciliation in reducing medication-related harm.​

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Medication without Harm brochure​

Taxonomy

Introduction

Key progress in the patient safety movement in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the call for a common language - a taxonomy - for categorizing medical events. The concept of a taxonomy combines terminology and the science of classification - in the case of patient safety, the Identification and classification of things that go wrong in health care, the causes why they occur, and the preventive approaches that can minimize their reoccurrence.

The Saudi Patient Safety Taxonomy was published in 2018, a comprehensive standard classification on patient safety events providing a structure for organizing information to be used for many purposes, including national statistics, descriptive studies, and evaluative research.

The purpose for developing a National Patient Safety Taxonomy

The purpose of the national classification for Patient Safety is to enable the categorization of patient safety information using standardized sets of concepts with agreed definitions, preferred terms, and the relationships between them. Furthermore, the Saudi Patient Safety classification has been designed to be genuine conjunction of national perceptions of the main issues related to patient safety and to facilitate the development of reliable organization - based, regional and national event reporting systems allowing for description, comparison, measurement, monitoring, analysis, and interpretation of information to improve patient care and its related policies. As a result, will enable setting up priorities in best practices in terms of patient safety and quality improvement initiatives.

The value of a Patient Safety Taxonomy

Presenting a unified and coherent structure for event reporting in Saudi Arabia through a working taxonomy conveys the message that the healthcare Sector will maintain a singular focus on the national detection, capture, analysis, and reporting of all aspects of medical events. Structuring patient safety information and sharing it in a structured way can support a deeper understanding of things that go wrong in health care, which could lead to the implementation of positive actions in a consistent fashion. It provides an infrastructure that will support the development of specific modules to address emerging patient safety concerns and facility-specific or regional interests. Moreover, standardized definitions found in the taxonomy are required to develop better quantitative and qualitative measures in patient safety. The Saudi Patient Safety Taxonomy could serve as a 'learning point' for developing countries that are falling behind to join the patient safety movement.

​Introduction:

This manual is designed to outline the Saudi Patient Safety Center (SPSC) responsibilities and mandates in setting the mechanism for reporting of sentinel events as described in the Saudi Health Council resolution (5/83​) dated 28/12/1439 H that is based on the Ministerial approval(64570) dated 1/12/1441 H. This manual provides healthcare facilities and healthcare facility governing sectors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a list of reportable sentinel events. It also provides a step-by-step guide that standardize the process of reporting and investigation and with focus on the facility's understanding of contributing factors to the event, culture's change and perception of staff, system failures, and process variabilities to reduce the probability of such an event in the future. 

​Saudi Healthcare Sentinel Event Manual	​
​Root Cause Analysis ​	​

​Patients Safety Alerts ​​

How it’s done?

New or under-recognized patient safety issues that can cause death or harm are identified through clinical review of sentinel events, medication errors reported through SPSC portal or any other channel. When we identify these issues, it will go through several steps to be published as national safety alerts, see below diagram: ​

Criteria for Selection:

• Only issued for safety-critical issues (risk of death, permanent harm, or severe and temporary harm)
• Have a concise and clear explanation of the risk
• The required actions are assessed for feasibility, risk of unintended consequences, equalities impact, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness
• The actions are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely)

 

Deciding if the patient safety issue meet our criteria:

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