Brussels, 27/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - A European network for patient safety, EUNetPaS, was officially launched on February 28-29 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with cofinancing from the Community under its public health programme. The network aims to improve the quality and safety of health services in the 27 EU member states, mainly by reducing the number of medical errors, a press release states.
Coordinated by the French National Authority for Health (HAS), EUNetPaS unites representatives of the European medical community (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, managers of healthcare organisations, patients' associations, etc) and the institutional partners involved in patient safety in the states of the European Union (members of national patient safety organisations and member states' ministries of health).
The project will facilitate the exchange of information and establish common principles at the EU level in order to improve the quality of care. Firstly, the work has consisted in identifying a contact in each member state to be the national correspondent for the network in that country. All these correspondents will form the general architecture of the system. Secondly, it will be the national correspondents' role to identify, in each member state, the stakeholders who, at national level, will take part in the setting up of the network and the attainment of its goals. In due course, the number of medical, diagnosis and treatment errors should be reduced and, in time, there should also be a reduction in the wasting of resources through the exchange of best practice and the development of effective tools.
EUNetPaS' work will first of all be geared to improving the quality of prescriptions and medical usage. Between three and five pilot hospitals will be chosen in about 15 countries for experimenting tools fine-tuned by the network. One of EUNetPaS' main missions will also be to develop the safety culture of care by those working in the health sector, with particular emphasis on training. A model programme should thus be produced and tested in faculties of medicine and nursing schools in several member countries. Also, a database must be created to compile a register of the different systems used for collecting treatment-related incidents or incidents due to bad care organisation. This provision should help to set an alarm system in place, should undesirable and serious effects appear linked to the treatment of a patient or, on the other hand, highlight particularly effective solutions allowing these problems to be reduced. Finally, common tools and indicators must be developed in order to assess the degree of care safety culture. (O.J.)