What to do? The WHO Global Action Plan on Patient Safety

Updated on 10 January 2025

2 minutes

General

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By Dr Ulrich Paschen

The WHO and its member states have initiated a Global Action Plan for Patient Safety 2021-2030. The plan is aimed at national governments, interest groups, healthcare organisations and services, and the WHO Secretariat itself.

The action plan sets seven strategic goals to be achieved through 35 specific strategies.

For each specific strategy, the Global Action Plan assigns different tasks to the addressees government, institutions, interest groups and the WHO Secretariat. They make up the plan's catalogue of actions.

In clinical risk management, we are interested in the measures that hospitals and comparable facilities are expected to take. The analysis resulted in 129 direct requests for action. How can the expectations be realised? What needs to be done in this decade? What do we possibly already have within the quality management systems?

Not all measures can be implemented with simple regulations. For some, a single procedural instruction is sufficient, while others require a bundle of activities that take some time to become effective. In a table, we have juxtaposed the requirements and brief descriptions of their implementation. The table refers to the QM Manual of Good Hospital Practice (http://www.gutehospitalpraxis.deregistration is required). The manual is based on the QM standards and contains suggestions for procedural instructions that can be helpful for implementing the required measures.

Users of the table can check whether the tasks mentioned are already included in their own QM system or not. Not all measures make sense in every organisation. There are probably still some points that are missing from this extensive list, particularly with regard to our national safety standards. Nevertheless, a self-critical assessment of the individual requirements can help to assess the maturity level of your own risk management.

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GOOD HOSPITAL PRACTICE

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What to do? The WHO Global Action Plan on Patient Safety