Patient Safety: A Worldwide Health Priority
With this first World Patient Safety Day, the objective was to provide global leadership for patient safety and to harness knowledge, expertise and innovation to improve patient safety in health care settings going forward.
Patient Risks: By the numbers
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2.6 million deaths occur every year all over the world, as a result of adverse healthcare events1
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At 28,000 deaths per year in Canada, patient harm ranks third in mortality after cancer and heart disease2
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Some estimates point to 440,000 preventable deaths occuring annually in the United States3
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In the United Kingdom, it is estimated that one incident of patient harm is reported every 35 seconds4
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Of the 421 million annual hospitalizations in the world, adverse events occur in approximately 42.7 million of those hospitalizations5
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Surgical procedures account for the majority of adverse incidents (27%), followed by medication errors (18.3%) and healthcare-associated infections (12.2%)6
