[Patient safety and risk management]

Abstract

Patient safety is the latest issue in the present stage of the German health care system, characterized by costs and quality both resulting in value of care. Patient safety defined as "absence of adverse events" represents an important problem, because 10% of in-house patients experience an adverse event, which in nearly 50% of the cases is due to an error (preventable adverse event). Threats and near misses are errors without a consecutive adverse event, much more common and better to integrate in the concept of risk management, which is based on thorough analysis and prevention of errors in medicine. Chart reviews show adverse events in between 3% and 11% of hospital patients, studies with direct observation result in higher estimates (17.7%). Nosocomial infections occur in 3-5%, adverse drug events in 0.17-6.5%, and adverse medical device events in up to 8% of patients. Medication errors (ordering, dosing, distribution) are present in up to 50% of all drug applications. Adverse drug events are important reasons for hospital admissions (3.2-10.8% of all admitted patients), other consequences of adverse drug events are severe disability and death. Mortality of adverse drug events is estimated between 0.04% and 0.95% of all patients. The introduction of risk management in the German health care system is one option to prevent a malpractice crisis similar to the situation in the US health care system in the 1990s. Errors are not to be considered only individual but also organizational failures. Critical incident report systems (CIRS) can help to increase the knowledge about errors, near misses and adverse events, so that prevention of errors can take place. On the organizational level, it is an issue of leaderchip to convince the members of the organization that prevention of errors has a higher priority than punishing and blaming. The medical and other professions, on the other side, have to change their self-understanding from the zero mistake philosophy to accepting errors as common events. This understanding is a prerequisite that analysis can be performed. The participation of patients should be strengthened, because public disclosure is an important issue, although the scientific evidence for real improvement in health care resulting from public disclosure is still inconclusive.