Unsafe care results in over 2 million deaths per year and is considered one of the world’s leading causes of death. In 2019, the 72nd World Health Assembly issued a call to action, The Global Action on Patient Safety, that called for Member States to democratize healthcare by engaging with the very users of the healthcare system—patients, families, and community members—along with other partners—in the “co-production” of safer healthcare.
The WHO’s Patients for Patient Safety (PFPS) Programme, guided by the London Declaration, addresses this global concern by advancing co-production efforts that demonstrate the powerful and important role that civil society, patients, families, and communities play in building harm reduction strategies that result in safer care in developing and developed countries. The real-world examples from the PFPS Programme and Member States illustrate how civil society as well as patients, families, and communities who have experienced harm from unsafe care have harnessed their wisdom and courageously partnered with passionate and forward-thinking leaders in healthcare including clinicians, researchers, policy makers, medical educators, and quality improvement experts to co-produce sustainable patient safety initiatives. Although each example is different in scope, structure, and purpose and engage different stakeholders at different levels, each highlights the necessary building blocks to transform our healthcare systems into learning environments through co-production of patient safety initiatives, and each responds to the call made in the London Declaration, the WHO PFPS Programme, and the World Health Assembly to place patients, families, communities, and civil society at the center of efforts to improve patient safety.
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