Brazil recorded 292,000 incidents involving failures in healthcare in 2022. The data was collected by the Brazilian Society for the Quality of Care and Patient Safety (Sobrasp), based on information from the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa ).
Cases include diagnostic errors, wrong medication or problems involving communication between teams in the transition of care.
Of the total notified, 6,000 were classified in the “never events” category (events that can never happen). These are situations that lead the patient to death or serious consequences.
This is the first time that this information has been grouped and, now, according to the president of Sobrasp, Victor Grabois, it will help public authorities and private health services to draw up care plans for patients.
“This management based on data, on evidence of what happens, is fundamental. First, so that society can understand the magnitude of the problem. And two: so that professionals and managers are aware and can act so that these adverse events do not happen”, he explains.
Still according to Grabois, much of this data relates to avoidable damage.
“They might not happen in more than half the cases. If healthcare professionals are aware of these risks, they will have a better chance of taking the correct actions”, he adds.
Psychologist Sandro Machado de Lima knows the importance of changing culture in healthcare environments. Thirteen years ago, he lost his father due to a wrong procedure during hospitalization.
“He was doing great, exercising in his room, ready to be discharged. Out of the blue, we were told he would need a transfusion. He did. Minutes later we received information of death,” he says.
After more than a decade in court, Sandro’s family managed to prove that the procedure was an error on the part of the healthcare team.
The couple Nicolas and Cristiane Boukouvalas also had to make a pilgrimage to doctors’ offices to prove that their son Heitor, now 13 years old, was the victim of an error during birth. “He was born premature and had cerebral palsy,” says Nicolas.
According to the parents, it was probably caused by the Kristeller Maneuver (strong pressure in the uterine region) during childbirth, which is no longer indicated in obstetrics.
World Day
A bill that aims to create the Patient Rights Statute has been pending in the National Congress since 2022. Brazil is one of the few countries that does not have a patient rights law.
This Sunday (17), the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrates five years since the creation of World Patient Safety Day with the theme “Engaging patients for patient safety”, and the 2023 slogan is “Elevate the voice of patients patients.”
According to the WHO, more than 3 million people die each year around the world from injuries associated with unsafe healthcare (1 in 10 patients, before the pandemic).
Unsafe care disproportionately impacts low- and middle-income countries, where 134 million adverse events occur in hospitals each year, contributing to 2.6 million deaths. Most of these deaths are preventable.
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Source: CNN Brasil
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