Ensuring Patient Safety in Hospital Management

During the last 20 years knowledge about patient safety has grown rapidly and measures taken to avoid harm are numerous and widespread - however avoidable adverse events in healthcare are still a worldwide problem.

Research has shown, that safety culture and the success of patient safety measures are dependent on the leadership of an organization. Patient safety needs to be approached top-down rather than bottom-up.

In this workshop, we would like to present policies, methods and measures that enhance the involvement of the senior hospital management concerning safety culture and patient safety projects. Following questions will be discussed: How do head of departments learn from adverse events or near misses and how do they facilitate learning from these events? Does senior hospital management understand and apply the human factors approach to decisions made at the top level? How can Ministries of Health foster a patient safety climate and ensure implementation of risk reduction strategies after serious adverse events?