#ConquerSilence October 28 to November 1

ConquerSilence
DateOctober 28, 2019
TopicsUncategorized

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Each year, 28,000 Canadians die from preventable harm when receiving health care.1 Canadian Patient Safety Week, taking place from October 28 to November 1, 2019, aims to increase awareness of patient safety and the role that patients and health care professionals can play in reducing harm.

This year’s Canadian Patient Safety Week theme is #ConquerSilence, prompting patients and health care professionals to battle systemic silence in a collective effort to reduce patient harm. This silence exists between patients and providers, between colleagues in health care facilities, between administrators in different regions, and between the public and policymakers.

How to Get Involved
Want to lend your voice to conquering silence? Share your story and advice on how to reduce harm at conquersilence.ca. You can also participate in Canadian Patient Safety Week by:

  • Listening to the award-winning PATIENT podcast
  • Joining the conversation on social media using the hashtag #ConquerSilence
  • Downloading promotional materials
  • Attending educational webinars
    • #ConquerSilence Webinar
    • Creating a Safe Space Webinar
    • Mandatory Reporting (Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act) Webinar

Improving Patient Safety in BC
Patient safety is the extent to which health care services do not harm patients. It involves designing and implementing processes to prevent and minimize adverse outcomes or injuries that could unintentionally result from the delivery of care.

Here in BC, we’re partnering with the province’s Ministry of Health, health authorities and health organizations to improve patient safety. This includes:

  • Leading a provincial working group to optimize and promote consistency in the review of patient safety incidents, and to establish guiding principles for supporting a learning culture for incident reviews.
  • Developing a foundational patient safety curriculum and resources for residents and faculty with the University of British Columbia faculty of medicine.
  • Exploring the opportunity to spread interdisciplinary learning reviews in BC through Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care.
  • Developing a network of trainers to build capability and capacity for effective disclosure of unanticipated outcomes.
  • Distributing patient safety alerts and learning summaries provincially to share information in a timely manner about adverse events or near misses.

References

  1. Risk Analytica. The case for investing in patient safety in Canada [Internet]. 2017 Aug; cited 2019 Oct 2 Available from: http://ow.ly/M8Je50wQAMx