World Patient Safety Day is celebrated every year on September 17 and is a WHO-led campaign to increase awareness of patient safety and support actions to address adverse events in healthcare. This day, which was first observed in 2019, has brought to light key challenges facing patient care globally. The theme for 2024 is “Improving Diagnosis for Patient Safety” with a particular emphasis on the need to improve diagnosis to increase patient safety.
Diagnosis and Its Significance
Diagnosis is the foundation of any medical treatment. It defines a patient’s state and has a direct impact on the treatment process. However, missed, delayed, or incorrect diagnoses are among the leading causes of patient harm worldwide. They cause millions of adverse events annually, which in turn cause avoidable injuries, disabilities or even death. With the ever changing systems of delivery of healthcare, it has become even more important to diagnose correctly.
Diagnostic errors can be disastrous in low- and middle-income countries, where patients have restricted access to modern medical equipment and technology. In these regions, it is estimated that more than 134 million adverse events happen in hospitalized patients every year because of unsafe healthcare practices.
The purpose of World Patient Safety Day 2024 is to raise awareness of these issues and engage healthcare organizations, workers, and consumers in enhancing diagnostic reliability.
Theme and Slogan for 2024
The theme has been defined as “Improving Diagnosis for Patient Safety” while the slogan is “Get it Right, Make it Safe!” The slogan emphasizes on the right diagnosis at the right time for the safety of the patient(Stock Markets BSE/NSE)(Medindia). They may be caused by inadequate diagnostic resources, failure of communication between different medical personnel, or the patient’s noninvolvement in the healthcare process. The focus of this year’s campaign is to enhance diagnostic systems, improve the patient-provider communication, and to embrace advanced diagnostic technologies.
The emphasis on diagnosis is particularly applicable to conditions such as sepsis that are potentially fatal and for which early diagnosis significantly increases the chances of survival. Such mistakes in the diagnosis of such conditions mean that the necessary treatments that should be administered may be delayed, leading to complications, or even death.
Global Call to Action
World Patient Safety Day 2024 is an opportunity for healthcare workers, policy makers, patients and families, and carers to focus on the issue of diagnostic errors. It emphasizes on raising awareness about training of healthcare workers, enhancing diagnostic facilities and educating patients to be more assertive and ask questions(Stock Markets BSE/NSE)(Medindia).
Today, the WHO calls for people all over the world to engage in activities that will raise awareness on diagnostic errors. These are organizing workshops, conducting campaigns on social networks, and starting local activities to increase people’s awareness. The campaign is intended to decrease diagnostic mistakes with the help of raising awareness, improving communication, and implementing new diagnostic tools into routine medical practice.
