Save the Children - State of the medical services: Global medical safety and quality audit report 2021 (4 April 2022)

Summary

This report by Save the Children's Global Medical Team (GMT) shares the results of independent audits conducted in 2021. The audits aimed to assess the safety and quality of clinical and pharmacy services delivered by the organisation across seven countries. The team strategically focused on higher-risk programmes where Save the Children staff deliver services directly, with an aim to ensure that services remain safe and fully assured.

Content

This report highlights some key findings.

Clinical services

• 100% of direct medical services were conducting the Clinical Standards Scorecards to ensure the safety of their service provision. However, use of the monthly and quarterly checklists was not as high or as regular.
• Direct service delivery in a majority of countries audited (5 out of 7) were fully compliant with the Clinical Standards.
• The average patient satisfaction score was 88%, outlining that in general, the 105 patients surveyed were satisfied with all aspects of service provision within our direct medical services.

The report also makes recommendations for improvement related to:

• Infection prevention and control
• Morbidity and mortality reviews
• Clinical referrals
• Medical standard treatment compliance
• Clinical triage
• Infrastructure
• Human resources for health

Pharmacy services

• Overall compliance to pharmacy standards varies significantly across countries, ranging from 57 to 100%.
• Compliance with waste management and Medical Incident Reporting (MIR) is generally high (above 80%) across all seven countries.
• Countries that were able to attend GMT Pharmacy Reference Group meetings on a regular basis had higher compliance scores.

The report also makes recommendations for improvement related to:

• Sourcing medications
• In-country staff engagement
• Stock management
• Medication storage
• Ensuring pharmacy support at a local level