[Safety management activities of Yokohama City University Hospital--safety management is the platform of quality improvement].
Four years have passed since mistaking patients for operations occurred at Yokohama city university hospital (YCU hosp) on January 11, 1999. The accident was not just a simple mistake such as the patients happened to have the same name. Its root seemed to be a system error that deeply related to health care delivery at YCU hosp. Based on the trying experience, YCU hosp started to construct a new system for health care safety management. From 2001 the system development entered the second phase. The activities of this phase included promoting interdisciplinary projects on a variety of topics, implementing a systematic educational program, and activating risk managers. As a whole, autonomous activities by health care professionals regarding patient safety started to take place in the hospital as a new approach for safety management. The next step will be to expand these activities into a movement for hospital-wide quality improvement and establishing clinical governance.
Hashimoto
Michio
M
Department of Medical Risk Management, Yokohama City University Hospital, Yokohama, Japan.
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D008297:Male; D010355:Patient Identification Systems / Q000379:methods; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D017751:Safety Management / Q000379:methods*