The Patient Safety Collaborative

Making a difference - Prevention Systems for Patient Safety

Patient Safety

Experiencing harm as a result of receiving health care is a growing concern for the public. Front-page articles in newspapers, television exposes, and cover stories in magazines have provided the stark details of the latest and most dramatic examples of medical errors. Two high profile government reports “To err is human. Building a Safer Health System” (USA, 1999, Institutes of Medicine), and “Organisation with a Memory”, (UK, June 2000, Department of Health) both tackled the issues of medical errors and patient safety in their respective countries and served to fuel the debate and level of concern.