“If it’s not safe, it’s not care”: Notes from the 2023 Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety
Why It Matters
What does it mean when 30 Ministers of Health are expected at the 5th Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety and attendance blossoms to 87?
Three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, it means that government health leaders from around the globe prioritized attendance at the Summit to reaffirm that preventing patient harm in health care is an urgent public health issue that is essential for global health security. The Summit convened in Montreux, Switzerland, in February 2023, and its first in-person convening since 2019 signaled the emergence from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The summit highlighted the importance of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Patient Safety Action Plan 2021–2030, which provides a comprehensive roadmap for strengthening patient safety, and the endorsement of 87 signatory nations of the Montreux Charter on Patient Safety.
The Montreux Charter identified actions that every nation should undertake to narrow implementation gaps in patient safety, including:
- Treat patient safety as a global public health priority.
- Build upon lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Develop partnerships, collaboration, and mutual learning.
- Engage patients and their families.
The Montreux Charter also urged national Ministries of Health to prioritize medication safety, safe surgery, infection prevention and control, and antimicrobial resistance.
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Key themes discussed and recommended to the attending Ministers of Health were system-level approaches to improving safety in health care settings. “Adapt to Adopt” echoed through the meeting venue as a call to action for improvers to make modifications to accepted models and frameworks while maintaining the core functionality to impart greater uptake at the local level.
The complexity of health care led to agreement on multimodal behavior change for safety among caregivers and health systems. Many attendees also agreed that the engagement of politicians and other leaders at the national, system, and organizational levels is critical to support resourcing and prioritization, especially when accompanied by defined national strategies that span political administrations. We also discussed how the expansion of improvement capability throughout government would extend improvements beyond the four walls of health care facilities to address community health needs and the social determinants of health.
Exemplifying the expression that “leaders lead,” the President of the Swiss Confederation Alain Berset not only opened and closed the Summit, but attended its entirety to highlight on a world stage the importance of supporting patient safety at the national level. Finally, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus received widespread applause when he stated, “If it’s not safe, it’s not care.”
With expectations to resume meeting annually, the 6th Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety will convene in Chile in 2024.
Jeff Salvon-Harman, MD, CPPS, CPE, is IHI's Vice President of Safety.
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