A Snapshot of Major Milestones in WHO’s Global Patient Safety Journey in 2023

World Health Organization (WHO) shared a list of key milestones in their Global Patient Safety Journey during 2023. Check it out!

 World Health Organization (WHO) shared a list of key milestones in their Global Patient Safety Journey during 2023. Check it out!

January-March

• The “5^th Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety” hosted by Switzerland, was organized in February 2023 in Montreux. The Summit with the overarching slogan “Less harm, better care – from resolution to implementation” was extremely successful in bringing together ministers, high-level representatives, and experts from all over the world, and in reviving the strong momentum created by the previous Summits, as narrated in the recently launched Official Summary Report of the Summit. With its ten recommendations, the Summit’s concluding document, the “Montreux Charter on Patient Safety”, serves as guidance and a catalyst for further strengthening patient safety globally, and reaffirms the commitment to the long-term continuity of the Summit series with Chile taking over as the host of the 6^th Summit in April 2024.
• A Steering Committee – jointly chaired by the UK and Germany as the countries initiating the Global Ministerial Summits on Patient Safety – and co-chaired by WHO – has continued to achieve its aims. The Committee, in operation since 2017, has this year provided leadership support to the Swiss Government ahead of the Montreux Summit and now working with the Chilean Government ahead of 2024 Summit in Santiago.

April-June

• WHO concluded the first ever ‘Global Patient Safety Member States Survey’ on implementation of global patient safety action plan, and an Interim Report on the progress was submitted to the 76^th World Health Assembly (WHA76) in May 2023. 
• 10th Global Patients Congress was organized by the International Alliance of Patients Organizations (IAPO), in May 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland. The session “Building national innovative patient and family partnerships in support of the Global Patient Safety Action Plan: Tomorrow’s safe primary healthcare, hospitals and health facilities” organized as a WHA side event, was very well attended by patient representatives and patient organizations from all WHO regions. The session provided a unique opportunity to elaborate on the role of patients, caregivers and families in taking action for patient safety improvements. At this point, paying tribute to our friend and colleague, Mr Kawaldip Sehmi, Chief Executive Officer, IAPO whom we lost this year. Kawaldip gave his all to the patients’ movement and spearheaded several initiatives for enhancing patients’ voice in health care. His legacy will live on forever.
• WHO/Europe launched the “WHO European Quality of Care and Patient Safety Focal Points Networks” in May 2023 in Athens, Greece, hosted by the WHO European Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety. The launch event brought together 70 national focal points for quality and patient safety from 30 countries in the WHO European region. This network serves as a means of connecting with the scope and action plan priorities of each country in real-time, provides a platform to discuss similar challenges to appraise regional and sub-regional implementation approaches for quality and patient safety improvement within the larger health agenda.
• The 10th Annual World Patient Safety, Science & Technology Summit was organized by the Patient Safety Movement Foundation in June 2023 in California, USA. Around 400 participants including clinicians, hospital administrators, safety officers, healthcare technologists, patient advocates, public policy experts, and government officials from countries across different WHO regions participated in the Summit. The theme of the Summit was “FIRST, DO NO HARM, and all participants of the Summit committed to working towards reaching ZERO preventable deaths in health care by 2030. The highlight of the Summit was several patients and families who shared their experiences of harm in health care and how they contributed to bringing high-level awareness and patient safety improvements in health care systems in many countries.
• The WHO Asia-Pacific Patient Safety (APPS) Network was launched and its inaugural webinar “Patient Safety Actions in the Asia-Pacific” was organized in June 2023. The objective of the APPS Network is to scale up implementation of the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030, in facilitating real time discussions and sharing of experiences, particularly in the Asia-Pacific.

July-September

• The WHO session “Safety of health and care workers: a priority for patient safety” was organized at the International Council of Nurses Congress 2023 with the theme “Nurses together: a force for global health” in July 2023 in Montreal, Canada. The Congress was attended by over 6000 delegates from more than 150 countries. The session focused on the challenges that health and care workers face while providing health care to patients, ranging from staff physical safety and psychological well-being to safe working environment and staff workload, and the interrelation of these challenges contributing to avoidable harm in health care. ICN online educational module on Patient Safety was also launched during the Congress.
• The WHO international workshop on the WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm was organized at the 19th World Congress of Pharmacology in July 2023 in Glasgow, Scotland UK in collaboration with the International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. The Congress was attended by over 2000 delegates from over 70 countries. The workshop created opportunity to share with a global pharmacology audience: the strategic framework of the WHO Challenge, the data on the progress in medication safety in Member States, and the priorities and best practices in LMICs.
• G20 Health Ministers Chair’s Statement and Outcome Document, adopted in August 2023 under the India G20 Presidency, states “we reaffirm our commitment to the Global Patient Safety Leaders Group created during the Saudi Arabia G20 Presidency”. The G20/Global Patient Safety Leaders Group has been established with the purpose of bridging implementation gaps through system-level solutions and locally applicable innovative solutions. The G20 Health Declaration 2023 provides a great impetus for strengthening of G20/Global Patient Safety Leaders Group, hosted by the Saudi Patient Safety Centre, and co-chaired jointed with WHO.
• At the Annual Conference of the International Society of Quality In Healthcare (ISQua) in August 2023 in Seoul, Republic of Korea, two WHO patient safety sessions were organized – the pre-conference session on ‘Engaging patients and families for the safety of health care’, focused on the crucial role patients, families and caregivers play in advancing safe care, and on national and international initiatives in patient and family engagement; and the main conference session on ‘Patient Safety in Action: Where are we with the WHO Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030?’, elaborated on the monitoring and reporting mechanism for assessing the implementation of the global action plan for reporting to WHA, the WHO Member State survey on Patient Safety, and the progress on the ten core indicators. In addition, WHO sessions were also organized on infection prevention and control and quality of care.
• World Patient Safety Day 2023 marked on 17 September, dedicated to the theme “Engaging patients for patient safety” with the slogan “Elevate the voice of patients!” witnessed unprecedented global celebration and success since its establishment in 2019. At least 156 countries commemorated the Day with a wide range of celebration activities and events, launch of hundreds of publications, reports, resources and tools aligned with the theme. One of the significant outcomes of the campaign was the establishment of ‘Patients for Patient Safety (PFPS)’ Networks and groups in Germany, Nigeria, Portugal, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, China. Patient Advisory Councils were also formulated in Saudi Arabia and India.

WHO headquarters, among several key activities, organized a Global (hybrid) Conference ‘Engaging patients for patient safety’ on 12-13 September 2023, with more than 120 in-person participants, 3655 total registrants and around 1400 online participants from around 131 countries across all WHO regions. The event featured presentations on local, national, and international initiatives on patient engagement, co-development of Patient Safety Rights’ Charter and a panel discussion on ‘Patient safety as human right’ by global patient safety leaders and experts in human rights. The conference also witnessed the launch of the Global Knowledge Sharing Platform for Patient Safety, created as part of WHO strategic partnership with SingHealth Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Singapore. The platform is aimed at supporting the exchange of patient safety related global resources, best practices and tools, acknowledging the pivotal role of knowledge sharing in advancing safety.

The World Patient Safety Day global campaign and WHO commemorative activities were planned and organized, with guidance and strategic advice from the high-level World Patient Safety Day 2023 Steering Committee.             

• The US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report “A Transformational Effort on Patient Safety” in September 2023 with recommendations to advance the nation’s commitment to supporting robust safety solutions for patients and the health care workforce.
• As part of a series of publications on ‘Economics of Patient Safety” and aligned with the WPSD 2023 theme, in September 2023 OECD published a health working paper “Patient Engagement for Patient Safety: The why, what, and how of patient engagement for improving patient safety”. The working paper highlights that patients’ and citizens’ perspectives and their active engagement are critical to make health systems safer and people-centred — and are key for co-designing health services and co-producing good health with healthcare professionals and building trust.
• WHO/AFRO region launched an Analytical Patient Safety Fact Sheet in September 2023, based on the data collected from countries in WHO African region as part of the ‘Global Patient Safety Member States Survey’.

October-December

• An international webinar on “Medication safety for look-alike, sound-alike medicines” was organized by WHO Patient Safety Flagship in October 2023. The webinar showcased the launch of WHO publication titled “Medication safety for look-alike, sound-alike medicines”. The publication analyses the problem and impact of LASA medication errors, and provides strategies to address these errors, aligned with the action framework of the ‘WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge: Medication Without Harm’.
• PFPS US launched a new project PIVOT (Patients involved in developing outcomes together) in November 2023 to redesign national patient survey tools that measure patient experiences and outcomes to include new questions with relation to patient safety, diagnosis and discrimination. 
• The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) launched a new IHI African Hospital Surgical Safety Initiative in November 2023 to address the crisis in post-surgical safety.
• The World Patients Alliance’s (WPA) Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting was organized in November 2023 in Dubai, UAE. This gathering brought together an eclectic mix of global leaders from patient organizations, passionate patient advocates, and dedicated healthcare stakeholders. As the event concludes, it’s time to reflect on the impactful moments and shared commitment to patient advocacy.
• The Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London, and Patient Safety Watch launched a report Global State of Patient Safety 2023 in December 2023 in London, UK, calling for immediate actions that will lead to enhanced patient safety worldwide. It puts forward three key recommendations to enhance safety measures, reduce performance differences, and improve the measurement of patient safety on a global scale – assessment, adoption and activation.
• A WHO Publication “Engaging patients for patient safety: Advocacy brief“ aligned with World Patient Safety Day 2023 dedicated to patient and family engagement was launched in December 2023. The advocacy brief is aimed at increasing awareness on the importance of partnering with patients and families as a key intervention to promote safer care. In this regard, the brief highlights the role of key stakeholders including governments, heath care leaders, health and care workers, patient safety advocates, patient organizations and other civil society organizations in successfully engaging patients to improve patient safety.

Global Patient Safety Collaborative (GPSC)

• Throughout 2023, several global, inter-country and country level activities were organized in collaboration with the Imperial College London, as WHO academic partner, for implementation of the Global Patient Safety Collaborative. GPSC is a strategic initiative established by the joint efforts of WHO and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
• Several capacity building workshops and interactive webinars were organized on different patient safety topics of interest, and centres of excellence and demonstration sites were established to enhance implementation at the country level, particularly in GPSC focused countries – India, Kenya, Mongolia and Pakistan, in collaboration with the respective ministries of health.

Throughout the year, several countries, key organizations, institutions and hospitals organized landmark international, regional and national patient safety conferences providing a great platform for exchange of knowledge and experiences.