World Patient Safety Day 2024
Reaching a health diagnosis involves patients and their health care teams working together to navigate the complex diagnostic process. This often ranges from discussions with the patient to conducting examinations and reviewing the results before reaching the final diagnosis and treatment. Delayed, incorrect or missed diagnosis can have significant consequences such as disability or even death.
The theme for this year’s World Patient Safety Day’s is “Get it right, make it safe!” which focuses on the pivotal role of correct and timely diagnosis in improving patient safety. You can read more about the NHS Patient Safety Strategy here.
Campaign key messages
Correct and timely diagnosis is the first step to preventative interventions and effective treatment.
Diagnostic errors account for 16% of preventable patient harm and are common in all health care settings. Diagnostic errors can include missed, incorrect, delayed or miscommunicated diagnoses. They can worsen patient outcomes and at times lead to prolonged or severe illness disability, or even death, and increased health care costs.
Understanding the diagnostic process is key to reducing errors.
The diagnostic process involves many iterative steps, including the patient’s initial presentation; history taking and examination; diagnostic testing, discussion, and communication of results; collaboration and coordination; final diagnosis and treatment plan; follow-up and re-evaluation. Errors can occur at any stage.
A range of solutions are available to address diagnostic errors.
Policy-makers and health care leaders should foster positive workplace environments and provide quality diagnostic tools; health workers should be encouraged to continuously develop their skills and address unconscious bias in judgement; and patients should be supported to be actively engaged throughout their diagnostic journey.
Diagnosis is a team effort.
Correct and timely diagnosis requires collaboration among patients, families, caregivers, health workers, health care leaders and policy-makers. All stakeholders must be engaged in shaping the diagnostic process and empowered to voice any concerns.
We care about patient safety
As part of our commitment to advocating for improved patient safety, we will be conducting Enter and View visits throughout September at local care homes to understand the quality of their services and report findings to the providers.
We are also keen to hear about your experience with patient safety or any aspect of health and social care. You can share your feedback by taking our quick survey, and responses can remain anonymous.
We share this feedback with the NHS and social care services to ensure that residents' views are taken into account and service delivery is improved.
