GUWAHATI/JORABAT, Sept 17 - Along with the rest of the world the World Patient Safety Day was observed today by 151 Base Hospital, Basistha in its auditorium, where Dr Gitartha Roymedhi, chief operating officer of the North East Cancer Hospital and Research Institute, Jorabat was the resource person cum speaker.
Dr Roymedhi highlighted the major reasons and factors behind medical errors which pose a major threat to patient safety. He focused on the patient safety guidelines that are required to be implemented at hospitals and healthcare institutions. He was joined by Paominlun Khongsai, social coordinator and Akshaymala Mahanta, public relation officer of NECHRI.
Dr Roymedhi in his presentation further said that hospital-acquired infections are a result of failure in patient safety and can be controlled only by providing proper training to the healthcare workers and patients should be also included in it. Patients mostly suffers from medical errors which are mostly preventable and to reduce the incidents of errors in healthcare there should be proper source of reporting, recording and analysing the errors. Active communication should be promoted to prevent errors in healthcare centres, he said.
�Safety means safety of the property, safety of infrastructure and safety of people. We have the right to treat a patient only if we can assure his safety and security during the course of treatment. Best physicians or doctors or highly experienced nurses and technicians also cannot provide a satisfactory service to the patients as long as they are not committed to providing safety to the patients,� Dr Roymedhi said.
Speaking on the occasion, NECHRI managing director Dr MN Baruah said that no one should be harmed in healthcare. �While treating the patients we always take care of their safety,� he said.
Over 100 Army personnel including the Commandant, general officers, medical officers, specialists, administrative officers, nursing officers, junior commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers and nursing students were present at the programme. GNRC celebrated World Patient Safety Day at its Dispur unit today. A seminar was organised to mark the occasion along with a poster making competition to raise awareness about the issue amongst the hospital employees. Noted healthcare consultant Dr Jeet Patwary was the resource person on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Nomal Chandra Bora, founder, Affordable Health Mission and GNRC said, �Every year 2.6 million people die in low and middle-income countries due to unsafe care in hospitals. 134 million adverse events occur each year in the healthcare institutions in these countries. As per a WHO study, 15 per cent of hospital expenses can be attributed to treating failures in patient safety in OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development) countries like Canada, France, etc. So, this is pretty evident that failure in patient safety creates a huge financial loss to a healthcare establishment. Moreover, it increases cost of healthcare and affects a country�s economic health as well. Four out of 10 patients are harmed in the primary and ambulatory setup all over the world. But the good thing is 80 per cent of those can be avoided. For that, we need to emphasise creating awareness about patient safety amongst general public as well as healthcare providers including nurses and patient attendants.�
