Measuring and improving patient safety in Canada (1 September 2022)

Summary

Patients, families, and care providers affected by patient safety incidents expect there will be learning and improvement so that others will not suffer. For that, countries need mature data systems and a culture of safety that includes improving by learning from reporting hazards, harm, and near misses, as well as learning from situations and organisations where safe care is delivered consistently over time, which is in most cases.

In this article, Ioana Popescu discusses patient safety in Canada. While systems are in place to support incident reporting, sharing, and learning from a variety of sources, in Canada truly national incident reporting is limited to medications, adverse drug reactions, and device failures. However, there are other pan-Canadian and grassroots efforts to advance reporting and learning from patient safety incidents that are complementary. 

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