In response to a weight of evidence that patients are frequently harmed as a result of their care, there have been concerted efforts to make healthcare safer, with health systems across the globe investing significant resources in policies and programmes designed to reduce adverse events. Yet, despite extensive efforts, improvements in safety have proved difficult to sustain and spread, with studies confirming there has been no measurable, systems-level improvement in the overall rates of preventable harm. Here, we highlight the limitations of the thinking which underpins current efforts to make healthcare systems safer and point to new and emerging approaches to understanding and addressing patient safety in complex, dynamic health systems.
Keywords: Adverse Events; Health System; Patient Safety; Preventable Harm; System Thinking.
© 2017 The Author(s); Published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.