“When our citizens go to a hospital, they expect safe healthcare. The good news is that most Member States now have patient safety programmes in place.
The good news is that most Member States now have patient safety programmes in place. The bad news is that, despite such progress, there are still adverse events in healthcare settings and patient safety is seldom part of healthcare workers training. We therefore need to pursue efforts to ensure greater safety for our citizens in healthcare settings”, said Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for Health.
A patient safety package published today by the European Commission highlights how the Commission and EU countries are addressing the challenge of patient safety, progress made since 2012 and barriers to overcome to improve patient safety as foreseen in a Council Recommendation of 2009.
While significant progress was made in terms of shaping national programmes for patient safety and putting in place systems for patients to report adverse effects, there is a still a long way to go in terms of implementing provisions on patient empowerment and in particular on education and training of healthcare workers. The documents published today will feed into the reflection process currently underway on future EU-level action on patient safety and quality of care.
