There is good news for patients around the world scheduled to have surgery on May 5, 2010. You may experience a reduced risk for hospital-acquired infections thanks to the observance of a world hand hygiene day. The World Health Organization (WHO) leads this global campaign promoting the importance of hand hygiene within the health care setting. [...]

Stories highlighting patient safety problems in the Canadian health care system appear in daily news reports across our country. The list includes misdiagnosis, drug, lab and surgical errors, dirty hands and dirty instruments, medical charting errors and omissions, unsupervised medical residents, and poor care management. More hospitals are now using checklists in pre-surgery, post-surgery and intensive care [...]

Patient safety is a hot topic in Canada and one that often leaves our politicians scrambling to maintain some semblance of action. They do so by creating more federal, provincial and territorial agencies and programs. Many of these government-funded initiatives are set-up as independent (arm’s length) non-profit organizations. Perhaps the biggest endeavour to date is [...]

You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to know that a man who has undergone brain surgery needs to remain in hospital for more than two days. Especially if he is already considered to be a high-risk patient due to pre-existing conditions including blindness and heart problems. The Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba tried [...]

According to the Canadian Adverse Events Study (2004), an estimated 185,000 hospital admissions are associated with adverse events each year resulting in the deaths of 24,000 Canadians annually. Around 70,000 of these adverse events are deemed to be preventable. You’ve gone to the hospital for emergency medical treatment or surgery. You suffer an adverse event [...]