WHO 9 point plan will protect patients from medical errors

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) health care errors affect one in every 10 patients around the world.

In an attempt to reduce the toll of health care-related harm affecting millions of patients, the WHO has developed a "Nine patient safety solutions".

The checklist is designed to help doctors and nurses avoid common mistakes and the nine key points listed include double-checking similar-sounding medication names, ensuring patients are correctly identified, and improving hand hygiene to avoid preventable infections.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says implementing the solutions is a way to improve patient safety.

The WHO says the most important knowledge in the field of patient safety is how to prevent harm from happening to patients during treatment and care.

According to the United Nations health agency the nine solutions are based on interventions and actions that have reduced problems related to patient safety in some countries.

The WHO urges health workers to improve communication and assure medication accuracy during transitions in patient care, carefully control concentrated electrolyte solutions, avoid mis-connections in catheters and other tubing, use injecting devices only once, and ensure the correct procedure is performed at the right place on the body.

Liam Donaldson, chair of the WHO's World Alliance for Patient Safety and Chief Medical Officer for Britain, says patient safety is now recognized as a priority by health systems around the world and the checklist should help reduce "the unacceptably high number of medical injuries around the world."

The panel assembled more than 50 recognized leaders and experts in patient safety from around the world to identify and adapt the nine solutions to different needs.

According to the WHO at any one time, 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from hospital-acquired infections and one in every 136 patients in the United States becomes severely ill as a result of an infection caught in hospital.

The agency says "wrong site procedures" on the body, including errors about the side, organ, implant or person to be operated upon, are infrequent but apparently not rare, and the WHO says communication breakdowns are the cause of many of the errors.

Experts say unsafe medical injections, with reused and unsterilised equipment occur most often in South Asia, the Middle East and the Western Pacific, including China, Japan, Vietnam and Australia.

The WHO says in sub-Saharan Africa, as many as 18 percent of injections are given with reused syringes or unsterilised needles, increasing the risk of hepatitis and HIV.

The nine solutions are now being made available in an accessible form for use and adaptation by WHO Member States to re-design patient care processes and make them safer.

They come under the headings of:

• look-alike, sound-alike medication names;

• patient identification;

• communication during patient hand-overs;

• performance of correct procedure at correct body site;

• control of concentrated electrolyte solutions;

• assuring medication accuracy at transitions in care;

• avoiding catheter and tubing misconnections;

• single use of injection devices; and

• improved hand hygiene to prevent health care-associated infection.

The WHO says the 'Patient Safety Solutions' focuses on patient safety and best practices, that can reduce risks to patients and aims to ensure that interventions and actions that have solved patient safety problems in one part of the world are made widely available in a form that is accessible and understandable to all.