Active Support

Patient Safety and Error Management—What Causes Adverse Events and How Can They Be Prevented? by Dr. med. Barbara Hoffmann, Dr. med. Julia Rohe in volume 6/2010

Since education and training are always crucial for a successful implementation, I wish to add two topics that are important for the introduction of a safety culture:

Between the submission and publication dates of the article, the German Medical Association published a concept for further medical education relating to patient safety for doctors; one of the collaborators was Dr Rohe, one of the article’s authors. The concept is eminently suitable for introducing and further developing a safety culture in a hospital. The CME concept serves the purpose of qualifying medical personnel within the increasingly complex subject that is medicine.

Since patient safety has to be anchored in medical professionals’ minds from medical school onwards, the World Health Organization—also in 2009—devised a similar educational concept for medical students. The intention is to introduce this at medical schools worldwide and thus sensitize future doctors to issues of patient safety early on in their careers.

It is not enough to demand patient safety, but doctors have to be supported actively in order to be armed with modern methods to rise to modern challenges. At Magdeburg University Medical Center, the CME concept patient safety is offered by default to all doctors working there, free of charge.

At the same time it is important to sensitize future generations of students to the topic. The medical faculty at Otto-von-Guericke-University at Magdeburg is therefore one of the first medical schools to offer its students a patient safety training course from this summer semester, which follows the concept established by WHO.

DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2010.0557a

Dr. med. Björn Tönneßen

Universitätsklinikum Magdeburg

Leipziger Str. 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany

Conflict of interest statement
The author is a risk manager at Magdeburg University Medical Center.

References

1. Hoffmann B, Rohe J: Patient safety and error management—What causes adverse events and how can they be prevented? [Patientensicherheit und Fehlermanagement: Ursachen unerwünschter Ereignisse und Maßnahmen zu ihrer Vermeidung]. Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107(6): 92–9.