Patient Safety Day in Ukraine Date in the current year: September 17, 2024

The term “patient safety” refers to the prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of medical error in order to ensure safety in health care. Although the principle primum non nocere (“first, do not harm”) has been one of the cornerstones of medical ethics for centuries, the frequency of avoidable adverse effects of healthcare errors was not well known until roughly two decades ago.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), medical errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world, regardless of how developed the healthcare system of any given country is. Recognizing the magnitude of the problem, the WHO has called medical errors a major healthcare concern and emphasized the importance of patient safety as a distinct healthcare discipline. The WHO actively supports research in the field of medical error prevention, as well as the introduction of patient safety as a compulsory discipline in medical education.

Patient Safety Day in Ukraine was inaugurated to recognize patient safety as one of the most important elements of quality medical care, as well as to support the decision of the 72nd World Health Assembly to establish World Patient Safety Day. The establishment of such a day in Ukraine is especially relevant in the light of the ongoing reform of the country’s healthcare system, one of the goals of which is to reduce the number of medical errors.