Switzerland, National Coordinator, Mrs. Erika Schütz.
The presenters were Vilma Raskelienne, Lidia Rodriguez, Gerdsja van Breemen, Julia Morgenbesser and Jouko Saramies and Katariina Jantunen.
They cited Patient Safety WalkRounds (WRs), Emergency Standards (medStandards),“Speak Up” and the Qnnext app as examples of safety innovations.
In WRs, there was a respectful attitude towards unit leaders and personnel – patient safety was everyone’s business – and a willingness to listen to ideas and solutions for patient safety. They were a tool for leaders and management for developing partnership for safety across the clinical areas.
Emergency Standards (medStandards) provided an algorithm for listing symptoms, suggestions for differential diagnoses and treatment suggestions.
Speaking Up for patient safety saved patients from accidents, preserved colleagues from mistakes, enabled staff to speak and learn together so that the mistakes were not repeated and improved patient safety.
They said a total of 950 employees were now using the Qnnect app through which they could access the intranet, learning and news. They could use it anytime, everywhere. It supported team building and complied with security and privacy standards.
The other innovation they presented centred on new food production of food waste, which benefitted the environment, was ethically sound and resulted in cost savings.
The last project was a new laboratory process which provided quicker results, more interesting work, standardisation of quality had lower energy consumption, and resulted in no forced lay-offs.
“The take home message from Switzerland is that an organisational safety culture is the best resource for improving health care efficiency, that clever innovation of health technologies facilitates the effectiveness of health intervention and comfort for patients and professionals and that environment commitment requires creativity and supposes a good investment for population health protection.”
