Patient safety

Patient safety is a specialized field about enhancing healthcare quality through the systematic prevention, reduction, reporting, and analysis of medical errors and preventable harm that contribute to adverse patient outcomes. While healthcare risks have always existed, patient safety only gained formal recognition in the 1990s after multiple nations reported alarming rates of medical error-related injuries.^[1] Urgency of the issue was underscored when the World Health Organization (WHO) identified that 1 in 10 patients globally experiences harm due to healthcare errors, declaring patient safety an "endemic concern" in modern medicine.^[2]

Today, patient safety stands as a distinct healthcare discipline, supported by a growing—though still evolving—scientific framework. A robust transdisciplinary body of theoretical and empirical research underpins this field,^[3] with emerging technologies like mobile health applications becoming pivotal to its advancement.^[4]