Patient Safety
OVERVIEW
Patient safety is defined as the “absence of adverse events” and often extended to include the activities involved in preventing adverse events, including adherence to quality standards and access to healthcare services
DEFINITIONS
- Adverse event (AE) — A harmful event that is due to the treatment rather than the disease; it may be preventable or non-preventable
- Preventable adverse event (PAE)— An adverse event that is preventable (i.e. caused by an error or a mistake)
- Critical incident — An event that might result in an adverse event or clearly increases the probability of an adverse event
- Error — An action or omission that entails deviating from the plan, following a wrong plan, or no plan. Whether harm arises from this is irrelevant for the definition of an error. Note that Reason’s definitions state that error is involves failures of execution of a plan, whereas mistakes refer to errors of planning.
- Near miss — An error without harm that could have resulted in harm
References and Links
- Brindley PG. Patient safety and acute care medicine: lessons for the future, insights from the past. Crit Care. 2010;14(2):217. PMC2887110.
- Hoffmann B, Rohe J. Patient safety and error management: what causes adverse events and how can they be prevented? Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2010 Feb;107(6):92-9.PMC2832110.
Critical Care
Compendium
Chris is an Intensivist and ECMO specialist at The Alfred ICU, where he is Deputy Director (Education). He is a Clinical Adjunct Associate Professor at Monash University, the Lead for the Clinician Educator Incubator programme, and a CICM First Part Examiner.
He is an internationally recognised Clinician Educator with a passion for helping clinicians learn and for improving the clinical performance of individuals and collectives. He was one of the founders of the FOAM movement (Free Open-Access Medical education) has been recognised for his contributions to education with awards from ANZICS, ANZAHPE, and ACEM.
His one great achievement is being the father of three amazing children.
On Bluesky, he is @precordialthump.bsky.social and on the site that Elon has screwed up, he is @precordialthump.
| INTENSIVE | RAGE | Resuscitology | SMACC