World Patient Safety Day is observed on September 17 with the objective of increasing public awareness and engagement, enhancing global understanding, and spurring global solidarity and action to promote patient safety. The Safety day celebration was held for three days at the Wockhardt Hospital Mira Road,Mumbai.
Healthcare has gone under a huge crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic as there was an unbearable pressure on the healthcare systems all over the world. Even in India, the number of patients with Coronavirus is surging up at an alarming rate.
The pandemic has unveiled risks and challenges (which include healthcare-associated infections, illness, violence, stigma, etc.) to healthcare workers in a healthcare setting. Unsafe health workers may pose risks to patients too. Safety demands proper risk identification, prioritization, mitigation, and management plan.
Hence, the theme for World Patient Safety Day this year was “Health worker Safety: A Priority for Patient Safety” depicting the importance of safe health workers for the delivery of safe patient care.
Ms. Prabha Kumari Head of the department – Quality, Wockhardt Hospital, Mira Road, said “The event celebration at Wockhardt Hospital Mira Road included – Safety Pledge (a pledge to practice safety culture always) taken by all associates in all shifts across departments. Also, a short video made by associates describing safety practices implemented (the new normal) at different touchpoints was released and made public. This was focused on gracefully accepting and implementing new normal for the safety of one and all.”
“Another highlight of the celebration included a unique initiative “Safe me, Safe You digital challenge”. This challenge was intended at sharing health worker safety practices by associates on social media while tagging other colleagues.
It supports both internal and external stakeholder engagement. Engagement creates thoughts which in turn drive actions. This will be our bit towards driving safe actions and behavior by the community during current testing times” Ms. Prabha adds.
The entire building was illuminated with orange color as a mark of respect and gratitude towards health workers in response to a call from WHO.
