Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz
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Bundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz · Jan 2015
[Patient safety in education and training of healthcare professionals in Germany].
In order to improve patient safety, healthcare professionals who care for patients directly or indirectly are required to possess specific knowledge and skills. Patient safety education is not or only poorly represented in education and examination regulations of healthcare professionals in Germany; therefore, it is only practiced rarely and on a voluntary basis. Meanwhile, several training curricula and concepts have been developed in the past 10 years internationally and recently in Germany, too. ⋯ This catalogue will serve as an important orientation when patient safety is to be implemented as a subject of professional education in Germany in the future. Moreover, teaching staff has to be trained and educational and training activities have to be evaluated. Patient safety education and training for (undergraduate) healthcare professional will require capital investment.
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Bundesgesundheitsblatt Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz · Jan 2015
[Patient safety: a topic of the future, the future of the topic].
Almost 10 years ago, the German Coalition for Patient Safety (Aktionsbündnis Patientensicherheit) was founded as a cooperation covering most institutions of the German health care system. As in other countries facing the issue of patient safety, methods for the analysis of "never events" have been developed, instruments for the identification of the "unknown unknowns" have been established (e.g., CIRS), and the paradigm of individual blame has been replaced by organizational, team and management factors. After these first steps, further developments can only be achieved in so far as patient safety is understood as a system property, which leads to specific implications for the further evolution of the healthccare system. ⋯ All these issues are only to be implemented as far as the general societal attitude supportings further improvement of patient safety and is ready to regard it as a major aim for future developments. Cost arguments alone - costs of suboptimal safety can be estimated to around
1 billion in Germany per year - are considered as insufficient to guarantee further improvements because other issues in the healthcare system show similar magnitudes. As a consequence, ethical implications remain as major arguments for ongoing professional and public discussions.