All prospective healthcare workers in Qatar will be required to take an online patient safety course in order to be licensed to work in the country, the Supreme Council of Health’s Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety Department (HQPSD) director Dr Jamal Rashid al-Khanji disclosed yesterday.
He was giving a keynote address at a workshop to mark the opening of the Patient Safety Awareness Week being observed for the first time in the country.
The workshop was attended by senior healthcare officials in the country including the SCH’s Assistant Secretary General for Medical Affairs Dr Saleh al-Marri.
Dr al-Khanji highlighted some of the achievements of the department and plans in the pipeline for healthcare quality and patient safety improvement, and plans to make patient safety undergraduate education the focus of healthcare education in the country.
A patient safety undergraduate curriculum, based on the World Health Organisation’s curriculum guide, is on the anvil.
“We are striving to put an international value to any programme that we adopt or adapt locally. We are going to do this with the WHO curriculum guide. We are already preparing several schools for the introduction of the curriculum here and the process is currently under review and planning,” the official mentioned.
Dr al-Khanji stated that the current system of two licensing processes whereby the Qatar Council for Health Practitioners (QCHP) licenses private healthcare practitioners and the public healthcare workers receive institutionalised licences, will soon disappear.
“We have realised the need for a single unit of licensing for all healthcare practitioners in the country and we expect this to come into existence soon,” he said.
There are also plans to start healthcare faculty regulation, which will ensure that all private hospitals are accredited by an international agency before the launch of the national licensing and accreditation project.
He said that the final draft of a health service agreement with private hospitals is ready. Work is progressing on a quality guideline for national standard for patient healthcare safety aside a planned patient safety friendly hospital initiative.
“We will also soon introduce and mandate the adoption of a surgical safety checklist, which is already proven successful in developed countries and all our healthcare facilities here are already adopting this checklist,” Dr al-Khanji said.
According to him, in April this year, the WHO and HQPSD will collaborate on the surgical safety checklist initiative.
“The WHO will provide technical assistance to us on this initiative and we are working hard to educate the public to know their responsibilities and rights as we will soon publish a patient bill of rights to further buttress this,” the official added.
In his opening address, Dr al-Marri acknowledged that Qatar believes in patient safety and protection while mentioning that one in 10 patients in developed countries get injured or is infected in the hospitals.
“We will ensure the highest point in healthcare quality and will also ensure minimised injection and medical errors by engaging patients with healthcare professionals,” he said.
The official mentioned plans to hold awareness activities in different shopping malls as part of the Patient Safety Awareness Week.
The other keynote speaker at the workshop was US-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s president and chief executive officer Maureen Bisognano.