Mon, Dec 05, 2005 page2

• Conference focuses on patient safety

  INTERNATIONAL FORUM Raising awareness is the first step in reducing harmful incidents, experts said, while encouraging more open communications is key

  • By Jenny Chou / STAFF REPORTER
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  Patient safety in hospitals has been a hot topic in Taiwan since two major incidents in 2002, but it is also increasingly being considered a top priority in quality of medical care worldwide.

  The two events in 2002 were a nurse at the Peichang Hospital for Women and Children giving the wrong injection to seven newborns, resulting in the death of one of them, and and staff at the Love First Clinic in Pingtung County giving more than 100 people the wrong medication.

  Optimizing patient safety was the focus of the International Conference on Patient Safety, organized by the Department of Health and the Taiwan Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation, and held yesterday.

  Noting that patient safety was an issue that was given priority in the US in 2000, the UK in 2001 and Australia in 2002, Department of Health Minister Hou Sheng-mao (侯勝茂) said, "The attention Taiwan has given to patient safety following adverse incidents in 2002 means that Taiwan is among the first countries in the world to emphasize this issue."

  STATISTICS

  According to statistics from a 1992 Utah-Colorado study, adverse event rates in the US were at 3.2 percent. The Quality in Australian Health Care Study of 1992 cited adverse event rates in that country to be at 10.6 percent while a study in the UK and Northern Ireland done between 1999 and 2000 showed a 11.7 percent adverse event rate.

  According to health department officials, patient safety initiatives undertaken since 2002 include giving special training to hospital administration staff and medical professionals, a nationwide communication network system, drafting of laws related to patient safety and funding for research in this area.

  WHO EXPERIENCE

  At the conference, Dr. Peter Mack On Pui (麥安沛), a senior consultant surgeon at Singapore General Hospital, shared his experiences from a World Health Organization (WHO) working group meeting on patient safety held in 2002.

  Raising awareness was seen as an important first step, with assessing the nature and scale of harm being the second, he said.

  The latter in turn required understanding of the specific safety problems particular to each specialty, with data collection playing a crucial role in this process. To collect data, both internal and external reporting systems were important.

  Next, Mack said it was important to understand the causes of harm, develop and test methods of prevention, and develop and run ongoing safety programs.

  In developing and testing methods of prevention, the standardization of complex processes was emphasized, he said.

  For less developed health-care systems, focus should be placed on education, attitude change and public information, the Singaporean surgeon said.

  PROACTIVE APPROACH

  In the development of safety programs, the emphasis should be on monitoring or reacting to safety issues and proactively assessing potential risks, he said.

  Bureau of Medical Affairs Deputy Director Tsai Su-ling (蔡素玲) stressed the importance of assessing the nature and scale of harm, saying that a preliminary requirement was to develop a "no blame" culture and to create an environment where staff were willing to communicate voluntarily about adverse incidents.

  She also stressed the importance of monitoring bodies and improving health literacy among the public in maintaining patient safety.

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