1. To integrate Patient Safety as an essential domain while aiming for Universal Health Coverage.
2. To study high reliability organizations (HRO) and learn from safety practices endorsed by other industries.
3. To promote value-based healthcare principles as an important lever to improve patient safety.
4. To highlight the impact of safety risks and burden of patient harm in health care.
5. To promote patient empowerment and community engagement as in crucial factor to improve patient safety.
6. To endorse patient safety related evidence-based structures, practices and processes that are meaningful and adaptable in LMIC.
7. To promote strategies for health workforce development and capacity building to improve patient safety.
If the global intention is to save more lives and significantly reduce patient harm, it is imperative that national healthcare systems adopt a holistic, systematic approach that extends across professional, cultural, technological and procedural boundaries. By conducting the 4th Global Ministerial Patient Safety Summit, we expect to:
- Draw recommendations for international standards and guidelines that are set on global significance issues.
- Establish patient safety as a crucial principle integrated on the efforts to achieve universal health coverage.
- Expand and reinforce patient safety allocated resources to low and middle-income countries. - Emerge with higher precision on the tools available to reduce harm and the principles underpinning their deployment to catalyze and sustain a truly global movement on patient safety.
- Engage all levels of political and health systems in taking a coordinated action to expand patient safety research and implementation strategies.
- Emerge with novel solutions in areas like digital health, virtual reality and behavioral insights.
- Generate recommendations that will inform the development of the “Jeddah's Patient Safety Global Declaration".
Theme 1: Universal Healthcare Coverage & Economics of Patient Safety, where discussions will focus on the integration of patient safety while aiming for universal health coverage, in addition to the economic burden of preventable adverse events, the impact of a decreased budget on patient safety initiatives, and strategies to effectively overcome economic challenges and implement recommendations on patient safety related evidence-based structures, practices and processes that are meaningful and adaptable in LMIC.
Theme 2: High reliable organizations (HRO) & Patient Safety, where the focus is to understand what safety principles and strategies we can learn and adopt from non-healthcare industries, e.g. nuclear, oil/gas, aviation, automobile, and others to improve safety.
Theme 3: Patient Empowerment & Patient Safety, where experts will analyze, highlight and recommend action on the impact of patient health literacy promotion and consequent patient empowerment and community engagement on patient safety.
Theme 4: Safety Risks and Burden of Patient Harm in Health Care, where the focus is to assess major safety risks and main causes for burden of harm in health care, including Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT), Healthcare Associated Infection risks and antimicrobial resistance, and based on country initiatives identify key strategies to reduce safety risks and burden of patient harm.
Theme 5: Healthcare Workforce & Patient Safety, where Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will highlight the crucial relationship between safety and competency of healthcare professionals and its importance on being the impelling force in patient safety promotion.
Theme 6: Patient Safety Policy Making, where discussions will focus on the impact and importance of a strong legislation that guides the development of policies and procedures that ensure patient safety.
Theme 7: Digital Health & Patient Safety: where experts will discuss the digital transformation of healthcare and its impact on the safe delivery of services, and its potential contribution to increased investments in coming years.
For many years, it was accepted that patient harm was an inevitable collateral damage from healthcare. However, to keep patients safe is a fundamental part of care. This is a call to action on many fronts and for many actors. It's imperative to reflect on the effectiveness of current practices and, collectively move forward wiser and committed to shape truly safer systems for generations to come.