World health leaders tackle hospital errors
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A global initiative to stop hospital errors will focus on the old dictum “first, do no harm” by encouraging health care workers to clean up their acts, health officials said on Tuesday.
They said hospital employees all over the world should heed the advice attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and the best way to do that is improve hygiene habits.
“Infection complicates the treatment and care of millions of patients worldwide every year,” Sir Liam Donaldson, Chair of the World Alliance for Patient Safety, told a news conference.
“As a result, some patients become more seriously ill than they would have been otherwise, some experience long-term disability and some die.”
The World Health Organization is trying to lead a coordinated effort globally to reduce the errors, which the U.S. Institute of Medicine estimates kill as many as 98,000 every year in the United States.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates as many as 1.3 million Americans are injured by medication errors every year. The Health and Human Services Department has been working on a nationwide electronic prescribing, records and inventory control system to help reduce those errors.
Other countries have similar problems, and the new collaboration will encourage hospitals to compare notes on what works to reduce such errors.
“Patient safety has made significant strides in some parts of the world during the past 10 years, thanks to a willingness to acknowledge that adverse events occur in health care and that a systematic approach must be employed to reduce the very real risk of patient harm,” Karen Timmons, chief executive officer of the Joint Commission International, said in a statement.
The effort by WHO, the nonprofit Joint Commission International and its U.S. parent the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Resources, will focus on some of the simpler issues first.
These include clean hands, clean practices, clean products, a clean environment and clean equipment, Donaldson said.
Several studies have shown that doctors, nurses and other health care workers routinely fail to wash their hands and disinfect equipment.
Because continual hand washing can irritate skin and take time, hospitals are finding solutions such as keeping hand sanitizer by every door may work better.
And the group will also start a patient education campaign urging patients to speak up if there are any questions about care or hygiene and to designate a friend or relative to act as an advocate.
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