Patient Safety Initiative to be launched in health centres

Muscat, Sept 8 - The Ministry of Health is planning to launch Patient Safety Initiative in primary health centres across the Sultanate. As part of the launch, Directorate General of Quality Assurance Centre (DGQAC) of the ministry hosted a workshop under the auspices of Dr Mohammed bin Saif al Hosni, MoH Under-Secretary for Health Affairs, in Muscat on Sunday. The DGQAC seeks to raise awareness on the concept of patient safety, the usage of international standards and implementing all means for its sustainability in order to spread the concept of patient safety among the community members and the health workers, as well as to provide the staff with the tools and techniques that help them to maintaining the culture of patient safety in their institutions.

Dr Mohammed al Hosni, praised the services of the PHC, where a large segment of community benefits from this service. Dr Qamra al Sariri, DGQAC Director-General, pointed out that the significant roles of the Centre in cooperation with the DGPHC aims to spread the concept of the patient safety and raising the quality level of health services in the PHC. Amal Khamis bait Mustahil, Head of Patient Safety at the DGQAC, explained the concepts of patient safety according to the definitions of the international organisations. She also clarified the methods of applying the WHO standards of patient safety in the PHC institutions, where a targeted plan has been developed to ensure the compliance of these standards with the PHC standards.

The Head of Patient Safety added that the importance of launching patient safety concept in the PHC is to raise the awareness on patient safety and to demonstrate the commitment and accountability, motivate the staff and building their capacity regarding the patient safety, as well as cost-reducing and the better use of resources. The workshop touched upon the patient safety standards and culture, the PHC SWOT analysis, history of quality & leadership in healthcare, key performance indicators, incidents performance indicators, incidents reporting & learning system and patient safety incident.