Practical Patient Safety

Despite sustained efforts to improve patient safety, preventable harm remains a persistent challenge in healthcare. Panagioti's 2019 meta-analytic indicate a 6% prevalence of avoidable patient harm, with 12% of these events resulting in severe outcomes or mortality. Progress in general has been limited, and a paradigm shift is needed.

This second edition of Practical Patient Safety shows frontline doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals how techniques developed and used by staff in High Reliability Organisations, such as the railway and aviation industries. It builds on the foundational aim of its predecessor, which is to equip individual healthcare professionals with practical, evidence-based techniques for error prevention in routine clinical settings. Drawing on insights from high-reliability industries such as aviation and rail, the book explores how small, intentional changes in communication, crisis management, and workplace civility can disrupt error chains and enhance safety.

With a focus on actionable strategies as structured readback, precise language use, and simulation-based preparation, this title provides a basic advice for the individual health care worker on error prevention in their day-to-day practice.