World Patient Safety Day - 17 September | Theme, History and Objectives

World Patient Safety Day is one of the important global public health events organized every year on 17th September to impart knowledge and guidance on reducing patient harm; happening due to lack of proper awareness and information's among the patients, healthcare staffs and insufficient healthcare facilities. World Patient Safety Day is among the 11 important global public health campaigns by the World Health Organization.

It is vital for the stakeholders catering healthcare service should be well skilled and well-informed towards patient handling with active engagement with patients. Patient safety can be compromised in several ways, but harm due to medication error has become a significant challenge to prevent avoidable damage in health care throughout the globe.

It is evident that once in a lifetime, every person goes through medication for illness, so the proper consumption of medications becomes crucial. Improper medications due to any reason could be fatal or lead to many health complications. Unsafe medication practice could happen due to several reasons like weak and inappropriate medication channels, partial involvement of medical staff, lack of facilities to store medicine and other human errors.

World Patient Safety Day 2023 Theme

This year 2023, World Patient Safety Day theme is “Engaging patients for patient safety”, a call to the stakeholders and policymakers to take the measures that includes involvement of patients in policy formation, contributing to co-designing strategies related to safety, part of health care administration, and be a part of their own care.

The World Health Assembly Resolution 72.6 -"Global action on patient safety," and the Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021-2030, both of which emphasise patient and family involvement as key to reducing harm in healthcare. 

Recent research has demonstrated that patients can contribute significantly to ensuring their own safety and preventing medical errors and adverse events. Their contributions played a vital role in establishing a correct diagnosis, deciding the best course of treatment, selecting the most qualified providers, ensuring that prescribed care is administered, and detecting potential problems before they escalate. 

Year by year, the themes for World Patient Safety Day

• World Patient Safety Day 2022 Theme: Medication Safety
• World Patient Safety Day 2021 Theme: Safe maternal and newborn care
• World Patient Safety Day 2020 Theme: Health Worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety
• World Patient Safety Day 2019 Theme: Patient Safety: A Global Health Priority

History of World Patient Safety Day

World Patient Safety Day was established in May 2019 by the World Health Organization under the 72nd resolution brought by the World Health Assembly to advocate Global action on patient safety. This resolution resulted from many events related to Patient Safety in 2016 and the active participation of many concerned organizations.

The urge to declare patient safety day emerged because of the growing complex healthcare systems and increased patient harm in healthcare facilities. 

Objectives of World Patient Safety Day 2022

• RAISE: It focuses on promoting global awareness of increasing medication harms due to medication errors and unsafe practices, urging for immediate action towards it.
• ENGAGE: This objective focuses on urging the healthcare stakeholders to prevent medication errors and reduce medication-related harm and law making bodies to enact such laws which could help in curbing the adverse incidence due to medication error.
• EMPOWER: It focuses on empowering patients and families around the world to practice safe use of medications
• SCALE UP: It aims at the proper implementation of the WHO Global Patient Safety theme- "Medication Without Harm".

Facts on World Patient Safety Day and Medication Harm to Patients

Department of General Medicine