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- The safety standards of Swiss hospitals often do not meet the expectations of patients.
- Recording and reporting of even serious errors is voluntary and is often neglected.
- According to estimates by the FOPH, this costs between 2,000 and 3,000 patients per year.
At Männedorf Hospital, patient safety has the highest priority. Before each operation, a running stop is made when everything is ready for operation. “The idea is to brake consciously,” explains chief physician Sven Staender. “Everyone should stop and ask, ‘Are we doing the right thing here?’
A security check that has been in place in Switzerland for years, not yet implemented consistently everywhere.
In Männedorf, however, open communication through the hierarchy should also prevent serious breakdowns from occurring.
This happens often in Swiss hospitals, also because these so-called “never events” do not have to be reported. For the incomprehensible Staender chief physician. “If there is serious damage, we must learn from it, and the knowledge must be available to other hospitals!”
Disastrous consequences
But that hardly happens to this day. There are also no national data on the quality of treatment and patient safety.
There are estimates for this, and they should change: The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) assumes that 12 percent of all hospital patients will be victims of adverse events. Half of that could be avoided. And with him from 2000 to 3000 deaths a year.
The Foundation for Patient Safety is tasked with improving patient safety. But director David Schwappach often registers great resistance when it comes to concrete measures. “Patient safety is simply not the top priority throughout the system. It begins with training and ends with the selection and evaluation criteria for directors and general managers “.
In Männedorf, two to three incidents that almost cause damage are recorded and analyzed every week: at CIRS, the “Critical Incident Reporting System”. For example, the incorrect labeling of an infusion bottle.
The CIRS bug reporting system would be a good basis for exchanging experiences at the national level. But less than half of the hospitals make use of this option. Because the system is voluntary.
Dealing with mistakes is often unclear
In a survey, the Patient Protection Foundation concluded that errors are still considered taboo in many Swiss hospitals and are systematically hidden in many places.
What most worries the director of the Foundation, David Schwappach: “Even in the case of incidents with serious consequences of damage, there are no clear processes in all hospitals about how they are reported, what happens to them and what consequences they have”.
Such processes do not even exist in a third of hospitals.
