The future of engaging patients and families for patient safety (15 September 2023)

Summary

The focus of this year's World Patient Safety Day is engaging patients in “recognition of the crucial role patients, families and caregivers play in the safety of healthcare”. In this Comment in the Lancet, Jane O'Hara and Carolyn Canfield outline how supporting patients and families to be partners in care safety is both a logical and moral imperative. That is, we need to do it for safer care, but we also should do it because safer care relies on relationships, reciprocal trust, and collaboration.