Prof. Sandra C. Buttigieg is lead guest editor of the e-book “Patient Safety: Delivering Cost-Contained, High Quality, Person-Centered, and Safe Healthcare” published in September 2020 by Frontiers Media SA – Open Access Publishers based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The other co-editors are Wilfried von Eiff, Vivienne Byers and Gianpaolo Tomaselli.
The World Health Organisation defines patient safety as the absence of preventable harm and the prevention of errors/adverse events in healthcare. Despite stakeholders’ unanimous consideration that patient safety is a vital principle of healthcare delivery, it remains a concern across health systems worldwide. Across the continuum of healthcare, every process is potentially subjected to adverse events, which may originate from human errors and faults in clinical and operational practices, products, procedures, or systems.
This e-book reflects the complexity facing patient safety. It also reflects on the challenges involved in delivering cost-contained, high quality, person-centered, ethically sound, and safe healthcare. The contributions project the multidimensionality of patient safety by highlighting its facets. These include healthcare managers’ and leaders’ role in prioritising safety climate for better patient outcomes, and the importance of innovation and new technologies in medicine to drive the patient safety agenda, which in turn leads to the debate of economic efficiency by containing costs through error minimisation and waste reduction. This e-book also discusses the use of complementary and alternative therapies, as well as over-the-counter drugs—which a closer look reveals that these day-to-day practices cannot be ignored. Patient safety critically depends on smart decision-making processes and ethical provider-patient relationships.
Prof. Sandra C. Buttigieg is Professor and Head of Department of Health Services Management at the Faculty of Health Sciences. She co-ordinates the new Postgraduate Certificate in Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management at FHS – a 30 ECTS programme at MQF level 7, and which may enable students to progress to a Master by Research in the subject area.