AAA Celebrates the World Patient Safety Day

Tuesday 17 September 2024 marks the fifth annual World Patient Safety Day (WPSD 2024). This year’s World Patient Safety Day is focused on the theme “Improving diagnosis for patient safety” using the slogan “Get it right, make it safe!”. On the day, patients and families, health workers, health care leaders, policy makers and civil society will emphasize the pivotal role of correct and timely diagnosis in improving patient safety.

This year AAA aims to:
• increase public awareness and engagement.
• enhance global understanding.
• work towards global solidarity and action by World Health Organization (WHO) Member States to enhance patient safety and reduce patient harm.

Through the slogan “Get it right, make it safe”, AAA is calling for concerted efforts to significantly reduce diagnostic errors through a variety of interventions rooted in systems thinking, human factors and actively engaging patients, their families, health workers and healthcare leaders. These interventions include—but are not limited to—making sure clinicians have a complete patient history, undertaking thorough clinical examinations, improving access to diagnostic tests, implementing methods to measure and learn from diagnostic errors, and adopting technology-based solutions.

Errors can happen at every stage of the diagnostic process and can happen in all healthcare settings. Diagnostic errors can be broadly divided into three categories:

1. Delayed diagnosis – where harm is caused because of a health condition not being identified at an earlier stage. This may happen because of failure to use the correct tests, outdated forms of assessment or failure to act on results of monitoring or testing.
2. Incorrect diagnosis – where the wrong diagnosis is made, and the true cause is then discovered later on. This can lead to patients receiving the wrong treatments, that may even be harmful. They also may not receive the appropriate treatment for their condition.
3. Missed diagnosis – where a patient’s illness or health condition is not identified, which can result in their condition worsening and avoidable harm because they are not receiving any treatment.