CONTEXT/BACKGROUND: According to international studies, every 10th patient admitted to hospitals suffers health damage due to errors in care, which could be avoided by proper measures and improving the operation of the provider. Studies verify that in 85-90% of these damages, weaknesses of healthcare providers can be identified in the background and the person is not responsible for making the mistake. Practitioners' attention has to be directed to recognize and be able to handle patient safety risks, and also to learn how to draw adequate conclusions from occurred errors to avoid similar cases. Education of patient safety knowledge - based on the thread above - is an expectation from EU. The matter of patient safety is a priority for WHO, which developed a curriculum for gradual training and practitioners. ACCORDING TO THE SUMMARIZING STUDY OF EU PSQCWG, ALTHOUGH THERE ARE TRAININGS IN THIS TOPIC IN EU MEMBER STATES, THEY DIFFER SIGNIFICANTLY IN BOTH CURRICULUM AND METHODS, and there are no information about their application. The realization of the training programs is difficult due to the overburden of employees, burnout, complexity of care and increasingly threatening shortage of labor, which is why employees cannot stay away from patient care in favor of trainings. Training effectiveness is influenced by educational methods, the personality of the trainers, and besides the curriculum, also the composition, number, professional background, earlier knowledge of the participants, as well as current workplace, social and cultural factors.OBJECTIVE: The overall goal of the project is to improve the safety of patient care through development and dissemination of more effective training programs for healthcare practitioners. Direct goal is to develop a training methodology capable of influencing daily practice towards improvement of patient safety, and to draw up suggestions for best practices.NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTSproject participants (appr. 15 capita)trainers (appr. 8 capita)indirectly affected:physicians, health care workers, managers, users of healthcare service in hospitalsACTIVITIESProject partners will measure and evaluate currently available patient safety trainings in their country. They will develop measurement tools and evaluation methods. After compiling a usable teaching material, a new educational methodology will be developed and tested at different test sites (three hospitals in both Hungary and Poland). Questionnaire surveys regarding patient safety knowledge and organisational culture will be carried out before and after the trainings, thus effectiveness can be measured. Based on the results, final adjustments to the methodology will be made to fully increase effectiveness.METHODOLOGYexisting patient safety training material analysis; surveys and multivariate statistical analysis of the results; development of methodology guidelinesRESULTSpatient safety material for healthcare professionals, survey questionnaires for measuring patient safety knowledge and organisational culture, patient safety educational methodology guideline, recommendation for the EU PSQCWG work group and for WHO based on project resultsSHORT DESCRIPTION OF THE RESULTSIn EU member states, besides the recommendation from 2009, initiating patient safety training programs is an expectation. Our project aims to provide practice-oriented, ready to use materials for future trainers and students, with trainer instructions, all broken down into academic units. Thus our results facilitate the fast dissemination and broader application of training programs. LONG TERM BENEFITS: TRAINING PROGRAMS BASED ON PROJECT RESULTS PROVIDE MORE EFFECTIVE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER, WITH THEIR SPREADING ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE CHANGES, EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION RISES, THE SAFETY, EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY OF CARE IMPROVES.
Patient safety, which is the reduction of risk of unnecessary harm associated with healthcare to an acceptable minimum, has become the most emphasised issue in healthcare policymaking as every 10th patient admitted to a hospital is harmed while receiving hospital care. In 85-90% of the cases, the weakness of the process is responsible for the error instead of individuals. Around 15% of hospital expenditures are produced by the additional tests and interventions needed to treat the effects of an adverse event. Education with respect to patient safety is the first step in changing the mindsets of professionals and contributing to the improvement of patient safety culture in an organisation. Patient safety education is recommended by the European Union (EU) (Recommendation on Patient Safety, 2009/C 151/01), the World Health Organization (WHO) also emphasises the importance of patient safety education, as it has developed curricula for graduate and postgraduate education as well. According to the reports on the patient safety education, there are only a few courses on the topic in the EU Member States, and they differ from each other in content and method. In addition to deepening and/or broadening the knowledge of providers, what is also important is to influence the organisational culture as much as possible through these courses. In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to define the best method in line with the content of the training course. Therefore, the main goal of our project was to improve safety during care by developing and disseminating more effective educational courses for healthcare professionals which lead to real changes in daily, clinical practice by making it safer. Also, it was expected to create recommendations for best practices based on our project results and experiences. Considering that the problem in focus is relevant regarding all across Europe and even more, we built our project in an international level. Three different institutions from three different countries took part in the initiative as follows. Semmelweis University Health Services Management Training Centre (SU) - the project leader - is a department of the Faculty of Health and Public Services. Beside its education experience and numerous international and national research and development projects, the safety of patient care is a special focus of professional activity in the SU. Towarzystwo Promocji Jakości Opieki Zdrowotnej w Polsce (TPJ) is the first not-for-profit non-governmental organisation in Poland, that is focused on the issues of quality and patient safety in healthcare and participates in many quality initiatives, both at the national and international level. The Spanish Ministry of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare is responsible of the proposal and implementation of government policy in health, planning and health care and consumer goods, as well as the exercise of the powers of the General State Administration to ensure the right of the citizens to health protection. To achieve the project goal our activities were: - developing three different training methods for health professionals with the same, 30-hour long time-frame - developing educational material according to the three training methods mentioned above - developing the methods of measurements that can show us the results of the effectiveness of the different training courses - involving three middle-sized hospitals in Poland and three in Hungary where the training courses and measurements could be realized and analysed - analysing the results of the above-mentioned measurements - finalizing the educational materials and training methods and compiling packages with the content of method description, educational material, suggestions for use and the expectable effects of the training - making conclusions from the results and sorting them according to different stakeholders and levels - disseminating the results and conclusions in many ways like conference, posts/articles and webpages. As a result we managed to compile: - patient safety educational material for healthcare professionals, - survey questionnaires for measuring patient safety knowledge and organisational culture - patient safety educational methodology guideline and - recommendation on patient safety education for the EU. The results of our project exceeded what we had expected. Beside the three, public training packages, we managed to make recommendations not just to the hospitals, but also to training centres, policy-makers and patients with their loved ones. Additionally, our results can be useful for other sectors, too, e.g. social or education sectors. All the important information and outputs of our project are available on our webpage.