The Patient Safety Council of Malaysia
was formally established in January 2003 following a Malaysian Cabinet
directive to ensure that the rakyat
receive safe health care. The formation of
the Patient Safety Council of Malaysia has been formalised by the Malaysian
Cabinet following the recommendations of the Honourable Minister of Health on
29th January 2003. This
council is chaired by the Director-
General of Health Malaysia and will advise the Honourable Minister of Health on
the situation of preventable adverse events as well as the measures taken to
overcome them, in an effort to promote systemic improvements in the safety and
quality of healthcare in Malaysia..
In the July 5, 2000
issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Dr. Lucian
Leape wrote that “The transforming
insight for medicine from human factors research is that errors are rarely due
to personal failings, inadequacies and carelessness. Rather, they result from
defects in the design and conditions of medical work that lead careful,
competent, caring physicians and nurses to make mistakes that are often no
different from the simple mistakes people make every day, but which have
devastating consequences for patients. Errors result from faulty systems
and not from faulty people. So, it is the systems that must be fixed.
Errors are excusable; ignoring them is not”.
It must be emphasised that
quality improvement efforts should never be equated with a fault-finding
missions. Looking for defects in healthcare is to identify the reasons or
critical areas where the fault is likely to occur and all efforts are
targeted to overcome them. Thus the basis of ‘ Quality - as doing the
right thing right the first time and doing it better the next’ must be
supported and upheld. So must a just and learning culture lead to a culture of
safety in the Malaysian health care system.
By having the National
Patient Safety Council lead the Patient Safety agenda in Malaysia, it is hoped
that all healthcare workers will take the lead to ensure that all
necessary measures are taken give patient safety top
priority. Minimising and ultimately eliminating preventable adverse events
in patient care is our ultimate goal.