Statement For World Patient Safety Awareness Week

The Human Side of Patient Safety

Healthcare institutions throughout the world have chosen March 13- 19, 2022 to focus on patient safety. Patient safety is at the heart of all care we provide for our clients at every patient encounter, but there are always ways to refine the patient experience to make it even safer.

In complex systems like our hospital, there are so many opportunities for things not to go as planned: equipment failures, medication shortages, antibiotic resistant hospital acquired infections, and natural disasters to name a few. Therefore, this year, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital has chosen to focus on the human side of patient safety. This focus is not only to prevent mistakes due to human error, but to promote quality improvement by the health care team, performing above the basic acceptable standard, and striving for excellence. This focuses on doing things better (often through identifying and addressing potential adverse incidents before something actually goes wrong) and not just avoiding known errors.

The golden yardstick against which we should all measure our actions is: “If this was my nearest and dearest, is there anything I could possibly do better?”

I know there are many good dedicated people working hard to keep the patients in our hospital safe, and I thank you for your service. This is our opportunity to make the patient experience at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital even safer, and I have every confidence that together we can do so.

– Dr. Clyde Cave
Director Medical Services (Ag.)