Safety culture in health care and safe health care
Authors: Rositsa Dimova, Rumyana Stoyanova
Title: Health Safety Culture and Safe Health Care
Pages: 232; Format: A5
ISBN: 978-619-237-063-3
INTRODUCTION
Medical activities and services have a complex, specific and not always predictable nature. Therefore, medical assistance is defined as a special type of activity in which, regardless of the proven professionalism of medical specialists in the process of prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation, and despite compliance with medical standards and internal departmental regulations and rules, unwanted incidents may occur and impairment of the patient.
The existence of "medical errors" around the world has been recognized by experts for decades, but what brought them into the public spotlight was a 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report entitled " To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System" ("To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System") In March 2001, a second edition of the IOM was published: "Leaping the Quality Gap: A New System of health care in the 21st century" ("Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century"), which expands the results of the first report into other important aspects related to quality in health care. As a result of the published reports, "medical "errors" and unwanted events become the object of global research aimed at their identification and classification, development of monitoring and reporting systems, as well as creation of methods and rules for their prevention.
The world medical theory and practice categorically recognizes that a positive or high safety culture in medical facilities is of great importance for reducing the frequency of "medical errors" and adverse events and ensuring quality medical care.
Without a doubt, a positive safety culture is a strategic asset, an asset for any healthcare organization and medical facility.
The topicality of the issue under consideration is reinforced by the debates related to the topic of adverse events and errors in healthcare, which have become more frequent in recent years in the public space.
The monograph is devoted to issues related to patient safety and aims to build on and complement the concepts of safety culture in health care and economic evaluations of medical errors. In it, readers will find a conceptual framework and a taxonomy of errors in medical practice, as well as an original methodology for comparing the costs associated with the occurrence of an adverse event or error with the costs of its prevention. The conceptual essence of the terms and concepts is based on the viewpoints of prominent authors, international institutions and organizations.
The publication is intended for students, doctoral students, teachers, etc. with a different professional profile, with a focus on public health and health management. At the same time, the work could serve as a manual for operational management with valuable ideas, facts and examples from medical theory and practice, and an attempt was made to answer the following questions:
• What do we mean by "medical error", adverse event and other concepts related to the problem?
• What is Safety Culture (SSC) in healthcare?
• How does KB manifest itself in healthcare organizations?
• What are the main aspects of safety culture?
• How can KB be measured?
• What strategies and policies are proposed for its management?
In addition, the benefits of applying information and communication systems (ICS) for recording and measuring the level of hospital safety culture for the patient are discussed, and an attempt is made for an economic evaluation of errors in medical practice. The publication presents in a systematized form the results of a national online survey conducted for the first time in the country, using a validated Bulgarian-language questionnaire for the study of hospital patient safety culture (B-HSOPSC), using a specially developed web- based platform. Readers will be able to familiarize themselves with clinical case studies of adverse events and errors, and the expert judgments presented are an essential contribution to the book. The main purpose of the examples described in the case studies is to learn lessons and improve the quality of medical care by sharing experiences, learning from practice and preventing mistakes from happening again. In this regard, the publication has a practical orientation with the aim of assisting health professionals in building a high safety culture in medical facilities.
We recognize that the monograph does not claim to be exhaustive, and we remain responsible for its content and shortcomings. At the same time, we sincerely hope that it will contribute to enriching the knowledge of health professionals to improve the management process in this area.