Editorial - Emotional safety is patient safety (BMJ Quality & Safety, 2 February 2023)

Summary

This editorial in BMJ Quality & Safety argues that patients' perceptions of their safety should not be dismissed when measuring healthcare safety. The authors argue that a differentiation between ‘feeling safe’, as defined through patient experience, and ‘being safe’, as defined through observation and evaluation using clinical outcomes selected by quality experts, creates a power differential and dynamic that degrades the role and value of patient experiences as valid patient safety indicators.