International expertise collaborates on patient safety
Thursday September 27, 2007 -- Jason Thompson
By combining Canadian patient safety efforts with those happening in other parts of the world, Paula Beard says healthcare organizations are able to put to use the strongest interventions possible to improve patient safety.

Beard, CPSI’s acting director of operations (Ontario to British Columbia), says this is the goal of High 5s, a “groundbreaking” international patient safety initiative launched by the several international bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Commonwealth Fund. CPSI is the lead technical agency for implementing High 5s in Canada.

The following areas have been identified for improvement under the High 5s initiative:

- Preventing patient care hand-over errors

- Preventing wrong site/wrong procedure/wrong person surgical errors

- Preventing continuity of medication errors

- Preventing high concentration drug errors

- Promoting effective hand-hygiene practices to prevent healthcare associated infections

As one of seven Commonwealth Fund countries collaborating in the development of the five standardized patient safety protocols, Beard says Canada is taking a leadership role in some areas. 

Marg Colquhoun with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Canada, and the national medication reconciliation lead for the Safer Healthcare Now (SHN) campaign, is leading the development of one of the High 5s protocols - assuring medication accuracy at transitions in care.

Beard says Canadian expertise is also providing leadership in the event analysis aspect of the evaluation framework for the High 5s.

“There are groups across the world that are all working on the same types of issues related to patient safety,” Beard says. “Being able to take bits and pieces to really re-enforce those initiatives to make sure that leading international experts can incorporate all of the best thinking and come up with the strongest initiatives.”

Beard says there is some extraordinary work in patient safety being done by people around the world, including Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“By combining our efforts, the synergy is incredible in terms of the great ideas that are coming through,” Beard says. “For example, ISMP Canada has worked really intensively on medication reconciliation with SHN and the enrollees in the SHN initiative.”

She adds that’s a significant reason why Colquhoun and ISMP-Canada were tapped to lead the continuity of medication errors aspect of High 5s.

The High 5s initiative is currently in the planning phase which means ensuring the standardized operating protocols are ones the seven participating countries can integrate into their own systems.

The second phase is to develop an evaluation strategy for defining success.

“We want to measure a variety of aspects and then we’ll be able to recommend the protocol in the event that we can show a measured improvement in the seven countries that are piloting it,” Beard says.

The third phase involves selecting pilot sites for the High 5s. In Canada, as in the other participating counties (Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands), up to 10 hospitals will be selected as pilot sites to test one or more of the five protocols.

The Canadian Patient Safety Institute will put out a call for organizations interested in participating in the pilot phase in 2008.