Activities

The development and implementation of various patient safety policies and interventions is gaining a broader coverage across the region.

• 45 European countries have committed to improving hand hygiene, 17 countries and regions run hand-hygiene campaigns, and 5636 health-care facilities have registered for the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands initiative in 46 European countries. In 2014 the ‘Save lives: clean your hands’ annual event was linked with preventing anti-microbial resistance
• Over 116 professional organizations from the European Region have endorsed the use of a surgical safety checklist, with several countries translating, adapting and using it on local or national scale.
• 4 European countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) are participating in the High 5s global undertaking to implement and evaluate the national impact of standardized patient safety interventions drawn from identified patient safety solutions. Three standard operating procedures have been developed, that address: concentrated injectable solutions, medication accuracy at transitions in care and correct procedure at the correct body site.
• 15 countries have expressed interest to participate in the validation of the information model for patient safety incident reporting learning, as piloting sites. This exercise is part of the recently initiated WHO and EC collaborative project.
• 5 countries (Bulgaria, France, Poland, Portugal the Netherlands) have participated in the dedicated small research on exploring patient participation in reducing safety risks. The results compiled in a 2013 published report show the potential role that informed patients can play in improving safety and quality of care.
• European experts from 8 countries are actively engaged in the current process of developing the WHO Leadership curriculum for patient safety.

Patient safety work at both regional and country level is implemented closely with the patient safety programme at WHO headquarters, with the support of WHO Collaborating Centers and in collaboration with key stakeholders, such as the such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the European Hospitals and Healthcare Federation, European federation of Nurses Association, European Patients Forum, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.