Improving diagnosis for patient safety: World Patient Safety Day 2024

Summary

In this blog, Patient Safety Learning looks ahead to World Patient Safety Day 2024 (WPSD 2024) and the theme of this year’s event, ‘Improving diagnosis for patient safety’.

Content

We are now just over two weeks away from the sixth annual World Patient Safety Day, organised by the World Health Organization (WHO). Taking place on Tuesday 17 September 2024, the theme of this year’s event is ‘Improving diagnosis for patient safety’.

Errors can happen at every stage of the diagnostic process and can happen in all healthcare settings. WHO estimates that:

• Diagnostic errors account for nearly 16% of preventable harm across healthcare systems.
• Most adults are likely to face at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime.

Broadly speaking, diagnostic errors can be divided into three categories:

1.    Delayed diagnosis – where harm is caused because of a health condition not being identified at an earlier stage. This may happen because of failure to use the correct tests, outdated forms of assessment or failure to act on results of monitoring or testing.

2.    Incorrect diagnosis – where the wrong diagnosis is made and the true cause is then discovered later. This can lead to patients receiving the wrong treatments, which may even be harmful. They also may not receive the appropriate treatment for their condition, with this delay potentially leading to poor outcomes and increased risk in mortality.

3.    Missed diagnosis – where a patient’s illness or health condition is not identified, which can result in their condition worsening and avoidable harm because they are not receiving any treatment.

At Patient Safety Learning, we believe that avoidable harm in healthcare continues to persist due to the failure to address the complex systemic causes that underpin this. In our report, A Blueprint for Action, we set out the need for a transformation in the health and care system’s approach to patient safety. Too often, patient safety is seen as a strategic priority, which in practice will be weighed (and inevitably traded-off) against other priorities. To transform our approach to this, we believe it is important that patient safety is not just seen as another priority, but as a core purpose of health and care.

We therefore strongly support World Patient Safety Day 2024 and WHO’s message that:

“Diagnostic safety can be significantly improved by addressing the systems-based issues and cognitive factors that can lead to diagnostic errors. Systemic factors are organizational vulnerabilities that predispose to diagnostic errors, including communication failures between health workers or health workers and patients, heavy workloads, and ineffective teamwork. Cognitive factors involve clinician training and experience as well as predisposition to biases, fatigue and stress.”

On and around this year’s World Patient Safety Day we will be seeking to highlight the critical importance of correct and timely diagnosis in ensuring patient safety and improving health outcomes. On the hub, our award-winning platform to share learning for patient safety, we will be sharing case studies, opinion pieces and patient experiences focused on diagnostic safety. We will be drawing on a number of relating factors including:

The importance of quality investigations into diagnostic error.

• Communicating diagnoses safely.
• Listening to the patient.
• Digital diagnostics.
• The impact on the patient of a delayed diagnosis.
• Rapid diagnosis and emergency treatment.

Sign up for free to the hub today to stay informed on our activities and subscribe to our special edition World Patient Safety Day newsletter.

Share your experiences on the hub

Are you a patient who has been affected by a delayed, incorrect or missed diagnosis? Or perhaps a healthcare professional with an example of an improvement project that aims to reduce diagnostic error and improve outcomes?

You can share your thoughts with us by commenting below (sign up here for free first), submitting a blog, or by emailing us at [email protected].

You can also find a number of existing resources, tools and stories relating to diagnosis and patient safety on the hub here.