Patient safety means preventing unintentional harm being caused to the patient. The government wants hospitals to work in a systematic, structural, and transparent manner on the improvement of patient safety. The Maastricht UMC+ takes this responsibility very seriously and does everything it can to assure your safety during your time at our hospital.
Prevent avoidable harm
Not all harm is necessarily the result of a mistake. For instance, some medicines can have side effects. And not all mistakes directly lead to harm. Avoidable harm is unintentional harm caused to the patient that could have been prevented. The Maastricht UMC+ does everything it can to prevent avoidable harm and to minimise the risks of this. After all, every instance of avoidable harm is one too many.
Patient safety system
In order to prevent avoidable harm, one of the measures the Maastricht UMC+ has introduced is a patient safety system. This is a structure that is focused on the continual improvement of patient safety. The most important tasks of the patient safety system are:
- the prediction,
- the detection, and
- the systematic management of risks of harm.
This must ensure that the risk of harm is minimised or better still eliminated.