Patient safety is the absence of preventable harm to a
patient during the process of health care and reduction
of risk of unnecessary harm associated with health care
to an acceptable minimum. An acceptable minimum refers
to the collective notions of given current knowledge,
resources available and the context in which care was
delivered weighed against the risk of non-treatment or
other treatment.1
More than 100 (134) million adverse events occur each
year due to unsafe care in hospitals in low- and middle-
income countries, contributing to 2.6 million deaths
annually. $42 billion medication errors cost an estimated
42 billion USD annually. 1 Four out of 10 patients are
harmed in the primary and ambulatory settings; up to
80% of harm in these settings can be avoided.1
Many view quality health care as the overarching
umbrella under which patient safety resides.2 The
Institute of Medicine (IOM) considers patient safety as
“indistinguishable from the delivery of quality health
care.” 3