Hospital.Help

Berlin – In view of avoidable errors in the healthcare system, an initiative is calling for political steps to increase patient safety. There is a demand for a national patient safety action plan with concrete measures, clear responsibilities and binding implementation, said the chairwoman of the Patient Safety Action Alliance (APS), Ruth Hecker, in Berlin today.

The alliance has started a corresponding petition, which can be signed for a few more weeks. The central demand of the petition to the Bundestag is to finance the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Action Plan for Patient Safety 2021-2030 in a structured manner and to implement it with political support by 2030. Safe treatment of patients must have the highest priority in the German healthcare system.

Patient safety is not a luxury, but must be a guideline for decisions in the healthcare system, emphasized Hecker. She referred to the nationwide number of more than 150 so-called never events recorded by the MD Bund last year, i.e. avoidable critical events with serious harm to patients.

The number is clearly underestimated and there is hardly any progress on the issue, just shrugging of the shoulders and a lack of willingness to be transparent everywhere, said Hecker. “These never events are reported every year. And the same never events are reported.”

Hecker emphasized that there is expressly no bashing of doctors and clinics. In the rarest of cases, the errors are due to the professionalism of doctors, nurses or other health professionals. However, the high personal commitment of individuals can reach its limits: organizational and process problems cannot be permanently anticipated and patient safety can be ensured.

The APS chairwoman spoke of a domino effect: political decisions had an impact on the organizational level, whose decisions in turn had consequences on the working level. “In short, state and federal political decision-making behavior has a significant influence on the everyday life of healthcare workers.” Patient safety should not remain lip service.

The Secretary General of the APS, Joachim Maurice Mielert, criticized it as “not remotely expedient” that the never-event register, which in his words was overdue, should now be pushed towards an innovation fund project. He justified this primarily with the limited duration of innovation fund projects.

However, a never-event register must be installed in a targeted and sustainable manner – “and quickly,” said Mielert. “I would like to say very clearly here that the Patient Safety Alliance, as the author of the never-event list, is of course predestined to keep a never-event register in Germany.” The APS itself describes the list mentioned as a “learning tool for a distinctive safety culture “.

The German Society for Surgery supports the Global Action Plan for Patient Safety, said its Secretary General Thomas Schmitz-Rixen. He emphasized that the hospital reform, which passed the Federal Council at the end of last week, had created opportunities to improve the quality of the health system. In his opinion, a never-event register is the responsibility of medical self-administration.

The President of the ABDA – Federal Association of German Pharmacists’ Associations, Gabriele Overwiening, said that patient safety has a lot to do with drug therapy safety. Due to political conditions, patients are often not sufficiently aware of what their drug therapy means. Medicines are often trivialized and trivialized. She promoted the role of local pharmacies in supporting drug therapy and thus patient safety. © ggr/aerzteblatt.de