What is Patient Safety Caravan?
It is a patient empowerment tool to reach out to the largest possible number of patients and their families while receiving healthcare by visiting the healthcare facility, talking to them, conveying the message of patient empowerment, and providing information that helps them to be effective and empowered members in health care through the Patient Safety Caravan. It is a hypothetical Caravan that consists of a group of volunteers and specialists who visit patients and their families in hospital departments (inpatient wards, outpatient clinics, emergency, and others) to raise awareness of patient safety by empowering, educating, and supporting them.
Insights from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The patient Safety Caravan was initiated in March 2019 at national level through training conducted by the Saudi Patient Safety Center team addressed to healthcare providers and medical students (volunteering team). The team was guided to use the online patient safety caravan toolkit as a reference. The impact of the Patient Safety Caravan is remarkable, which helps hospitals to find it as an interactive tool to engage the patients and their families at the hospital level with 244 volunteers/ staff members and targeted 3205 patients.
Insights from Pakistan
Patient Safety Caravan was piloted from June - July 2021 in Manawan Hospital (TMH). It is a secondary health facility based in Lahore in Punjab province, Pakistan. The aim of piloting a patient safety caravan is to share the kingdom of Saudi Arabia›s experience and pilot it in countries other than Saudi Arabia and to check the modification and the lessons learned resulting from it. 20 staff members were trained through 2700 sessions to execute the Patient Safety Caravan at different hospital settings with targeted 800 patients.
The caravan is considered as a supportive tool in providing a safe environment for the patients and staff. Patient safety Caravan has improved incident reporting at the hospital level and made patients and their attendants more confident to share their thoughts about diseases. It also built capacities of healthcare work promoting patient safety with good catches, hospital-associated infections, Surgical site Infections, and patient comforts. The impact of the Patient Safety Caravan is significant, which involves the patients and their families in the process of treatment at the hospital level.