Improving patient safety through participation in the European Union Network for Patient Safety and Quality of Care

The participation in the European Union Network for Patient Safety and Quality of Care (PaSQ) meant a new impulse for implementation efforts of good practices in participating Dutch hospitals. With support of the Dutch PaSQ team NIVEL & CBO - Dutch Institute for Healthcare Improvement, seven Dutch hospitals participated in PaSQ, each working on the implementation or sustainability of one or more good practices: Medication Reconciliation, Paediatric Early Warning Scores (PEWS), and Hand Hygiene. The Netherlands had the opportunity to showcase Dutch knowledge and good practices, as well as learn from knowledge and experiences from other countries, to improve patient safety.

 
The overall goal of PaSQ was: ‘to improve patient safety and quality of care in Europe by supporting the implementation of good organizational practices and safe clinical practices in health care organizations and through sharing of information and experiences’. The general objective of PaSQ is to improve patient safety and quality of care in Europe by supporting the implementation of good organizational practices and safe clinical practices in health care organizations, through sharing information and experiences.

Good practices
Patient involvement and further implementation of existing good practices have been the main focus of PaSQ. The seven Dutch hospitals have been supported by the Dutch PaSQ team NIVEL & CBO. They became part of a national network in which they exchanged knowledge and experiences. The hospitals received implementation support in the form of national meetings, webinars, conference calls with project leaders, access to the PaSQ network, website and implementation toolboxes, and access to PaSQ activities such as international webinars and exchange meetings. In order to provide hospitals with insight into their performance on the relevant safe clinical practices and further stimulate implementation efforts, an implementation evaluation for each of the three safe clinical practices  has been conducted by NIVEL.
 
Improvement challenges
Many of the hospitals that introduced Paediatric Early Warning Scores (PEWS) during the project, used the participation in PaSQ as an incentive to get the implementation of PEWS going and used the national network to exchange instruments and experiences.  PEWS was used both for more patients and more often per patient in the five participating hospitals by the end of PaSQ in 2014.
Hand Hygiene did not involve a new subject for the participating hospitals and the PaSQ toolbox contained no new tools or ideas for Dutch hospitals. Only two hospitals participated, which might explain limited opportunity for knowledge exchange and no improvement during the project.
Medication Reconciliation compliance did improve in the two participating hospitals, when compared to compliance in 2012. The largest improvement was seen in the number of patients where a medication overview was created before discharge.
 
Future
The researchers believe that future participation of Dutch healthcare organisations in an international network would be most beneficial to these organisations if the network is aimed at safe clinical practices that are new to the Netherlands. This would ensure sufficient room for improvement, as well as access to new insights, methods and materials from other countries.
 
A proposal for a permanent network from April 2016 for patient safety and quality of care in the EU has been developed by PaSQ partners.   
During the transition year from April 2015-April 2016 the Dutch PaSQ team is supporting participation of Dutch healthcare organizations in the PaSQ network.

Funding
European Commission
Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport
 
Cooperating partner
CBO