World Patient Safety Day

The recent events of the world going through the pandemic of COVID 19 have made the medical world stand and stay on its feet, readier than ever. A lot of instances were seen where people were losing their precious lives or becoming severely and permanently ill due to medication errors and lack of efforts to cure the patients. This same reason is a very important aspect in the world celebrating the World Patient Safety Day.

Facts relating to medical error; Source: WHO

The World Patient Safety Day was established in the year 2019. From there on, it’s being celebrated every year on the 17th of September. Every year, this day is celebrated with a special theme that’s decided and taken into consideration. A lot of webinars, challenges and workshops are organised relating to that particular theme near and on 17th September in order to create awareness and induce change. Its goals are to make an increment in public mindfulness and commitment, improve worldwide comprehension, and work towards worldwide fortitude and activity to upgrade patient security and diminish patient damage.

The World Patient Safety Day 2019 observed its theme as ‘Patient Safety: A Global Health Priority’. The year after that, i.e., 2020 observed ‘Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety’ as its theme. Since this was the year the pandemic of Covid 19 gave its introduction to the world, the year 2020 having this theme on World Patient Safety Day was appropriate

and much needed. It just wasn’t celebrated that year but also helped create huge awareness and definitely a change in how the people behaved and treated the medical staff. The year 2021 had ‘Safe and Respectful Maternal and NewBorn Care’ as its theme.

It’s no news that there are hundreds of cases every year that are reported of people falling really sick or even dying due to the lack of care in giving out medicines. In some cases, if that happens, medicines can cause serious harm to those it’s given to. Every year, along with incurring the loss of people dying due to wrongfully provided medication, the families and the close ones of these people are not only the ones who incur the losses. The medical industry also incurs huge losses which are surely avoidable. The pandemic threw a brighter light on the medication errors which led to the year 2022s World Patient’s Safety Day to have its theme set as ‘Medication without Harm’.

The theme Medication without harm centers and revolves on reinforcing the medical processes. The theme also guarantees protection and quality utilization of medicines. All of the medical staff as well as everyone else related to the medical industry has been advised to keep medication safety as a priority at all times in order to reduce medication related errors to a minimum or even null. Some of the main objectives that are being focused on this year are Checking polypharmacy and answering anything improper related to it, Decreasing mischief that is caused by giving out highly risking medicines and further developing medicine security.

To notice the day, WHO is coordinating a progression of online webinars taking drugs safety and wellbeing and is creating various prescription security arrangements.

Taking care and precautions when distributing, prescribing, and taking medicines is truly a great initiative along with all the other ones that were noticed and concentrated upon on all of the three previous World Patient Safety Days as well as the one coming up in 2022. If this theme of this year becomes a success, a large number of medical errors have a huge chance of getting reduced drastically, marking a huge change all around the country and the world.

World Patient Safety Day is observed on 17th September every year; Source: dreamstine.com