March 4-10 is Patient Safety Awareness Week

March 9, 2007 -- Patient Safety Awareness Week is a national initiative intended to work with hospitals and health care organizations to improve their patient safety strategies, as well as to help average citizens become more involved in their own health care.

The Institute of Medicine's Health Care Quality Initiative is an ongoing effort to assess and improve the quality of health care in America. You can read about the initiative at the IOM's Web site Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative.

Through this major effort, started in 1996, IOM has issued more than a dozen reports advising the nation on the critical steps to improving the quality of health care and patient safety. Among them, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System examines the costs and impact of medical errors, placing the issue of patient safety and quality of care on the radar screen of policymakers. The report describes broader quality issues and recommends aims and rules for a care delivery redesign. Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care recommends that all health care settings establish patient safety programs operated by trained personnel within a culture of safety. And Preventing Medication Errors recommends that patients' rights regarding safety and quality in health care and medication use should be formalized at the state and/or federal levels and ensured at every point of care.

• To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System
• Crossing the Quality Chasm: The IOM Health Care Quality Initiative
• Patient Safety: Achieving a New Standard for Care
• Preventing Medication Errors: Quality Chasm Series

• National Patient Safety Foundation's Patient Safety Awareness Week Site