WHO RELEASES PATIENT SAFETY SOLUTIONS

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Patient Safety Solutions recently unveiled 9 solutions aimed at preventing health care errors. The main purpose of the solutions is to guide the redesign of care processes to prevent human errors from ever reaching patients.

The individual Patient Safety Solutions address the issues of look-alike, sound-alike medication names; correct patient identification; hand-over communication; correct procedure at the correct body site; control of concentrated electrolyte solutions; medication accuracy; catheter and tubing misconnections; needle reuse and injection safety; and hand hygiene.

In 2005, WHO designated the Joint Commission and the Joint Commission International as its Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety Solutions. The solutions were determined after identifying widespread problems and challenges to safe care, identifying promising strategies, and vetting them through a lengthy field-review process that collected feedback from health care providers, practitioners, and other experts from >100 countries.