Organised by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) under the patronage and in the presence of HE the Minister of Public Health Dr Hanan Mohamed al-Kuwari, the 4th Qatar Patient Safety Week was opened on Monday at Sheraton Doha.
About 1,000 healthcare professionals are participating in the weeklong event taking place until September 22. The inaugural event featured a number of top level government officials, distinguished guests and international speakers. The guests at the event included Dr Sheikh Mohamed bin Hamad al-Thani, director of Public Health at MoPH; Prof Lord Darzi, director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College of London; and Mark Pearson, deputy director for employment, Labour and Social Affairs at Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development among others.
Welcoming the gathering, Huda al-Katheeri, acting director, Healthcare Quality and Patent Safety Department, MoPH, noted that healthcare professionals are working in a very complex system and therefore the delivery of healthcare will always come with risks.
“During my interaction for several years, I have seen an increasing emphasis on patient safety issues and huge interest and efforts and improvements in the area of patient safety and quality of healthcare services.There has been a growing interest in involving patients and families in improving quality of care, the projects and programmes that are dedicated to improving medication safety, reducing healthcare associated infections, preventing falls and pressure ulcers, improving reporting of incidents and near misses and many more, all contributing to making our healthcare system safer for our patients and our staff.”
“I have seen achievement at all different levels. At MoPH level, healthcare organisations government, semi-government and private, as well as achievements with other sectors such as the academic sector and community organisations,” she added.
Giving the first keynote address on ‘Innovations in Patient Safety’ Lord Darzi said there is every likelihood that the political will of the government of Qatar has made the healthcare system in the country one of the best in the region.
“Patient safety has evolved into a cornerstone of healthcare quality and a mainstay of political rhetoric about how to improve care around the world. Today, we are at a more exciting juncture where it is possible not only to learn from mistakes but also from excellence and innovation,” explained Prof Darzi.
“We are pioneering new technologies, building new equipment and designing new environment which reduce the opportunity for harm in the first place. In the face of sustained and emerging threats to patient safety, this keynote speech will cover the tools needed to capitalise on innovation and build a safer care system for the future,” he highlighted.
“Discussions of Universal Health Coverage have ignored patient safety and quality of health care in general or – even worse – have treated it as something that is secondary in importance to expanding health coverage. This is wrong. First of all, poor patient safety is a significant cause of the global disease burden. In turn, the cost of poor patient safety is high,” noted Pearson while delivering the second Keynote speech on the occasion.
