Surgical Safety in Canada: Detailed Analysis Report

Report.pdf

Background

Purpose

Methods

Limitations

Results

CIHI data on pan-Canadian health system performance

Resources for safe surgical care

Patient safety glossary

Medico-legal glossary

Reference

 

 

Background

In January 2014, the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI), in conjunction with key healthcare stakeholders, formed the National Patient Safety Consortium to create an Integrated Patient Safety Action Plan. The action plan identified four priority areas: safe surgical care, medication safety, home care safety, and infection

prevention and control.

A strategy to advance a national surgical care safety action plan was the focus of the March 2014 Surgical Care Safety Summit. The summit was attended by over 30 stakeholder representatives that included professional associations, provincial ministries, health authorities, quality councils, and patient safety groups. The summit

report, A Surgical Care Safety Action Plan, outlined seven themes: measurement and analysis, access to care, best practices, patient engagement, teamwork and communication, quality improvement infrastructure, and learning from surgical patient safety incidents. The action plan identified the need for a retrospective analysis of surgical incident data and the publication of these findings in a report to be circulated nationally.1

The Consortium requested that the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), which provides medical liability protection for most Canadian physicians, and the Healthcare InsuranceReciprocal of Canada (HIROC), which provides liability insurance for healthcare organizations and their employees, conduct a retrospective analysis of Canadian surgical incident data. While providing medical liability protection for different groups, the two organizations are engaged in a broad and comprehensive effort to analyze data derived from their experiences and advance learning from these cases. Indeed, the CMPA and HIROC are dedicated to using their expertise in the medico-legal domain for advancing collaborative efforts in shared learning and identifying priority areas for health system improvements......