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PATIENT SAFETY AND THE SURGEON: PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY Among medical specialties, surgery is one of the most invasive healthcare interventions that a patient can experience. More than 100 million people worldwide undergo surgical treatment every year. Pr...

PATIENT SAFETY Medicine will never be risk-free. From the beginning of train - ing, doctors are taught that errors are unacceptable and that the philosophy of primum non nocere (first, do no harm) should - permeate all aspects of treatment. Y et, worldwide, d...

Prescribing safely Patients are vulnerable to mistakes made in any one of the many steps involved in the ordering, dispensing and admin istration of medications. Medication errors are one of the most common errors across all medical specialties. Accuracy requ...

QUALITY MEASURES Measurement is a key principle of quality improvement. Although many changes take place in health care, without measurement it is impossible to determine whether those changes actually result in improved quality . Measurement of improvement r...

Resource-rich countries Many countries and professional bodies in resource-rich coun - tries have developed various strategies to improve outcomes in surgical practice. These include: /uni25CF regulatory systems for the licensing of physicians and healthcare ...

STRATEGIES FOR PATIENT SAFETY As safety is everybody’s business, building and embedding a safety culture into surgical service delivery is the key to improving patient outcomes. At an institutional level, defining ‘best practice’ within a robust governance syst...

Shouldering the burden of adverse event As primary care givers and clinical leaders, surgeons will not infrequently find themselves taking an active part in adverse event reporting. The professional responsibilities involved with managing adverse outcomes can b...

Situation awareness: identifying Situation awareness: identifying

Situational awareness: understanding the work environment and working well within it Nowhere is teamworking more important than in managing the flow of information within health care. Poor communica - tion can lead to misinformation to patients and sta ff and d...