Patient Safety Awareness Week March 2 to Mar...( Patient Safety - A...),Health

Patient Safety - A Road Taken Together

NORTH ADAMS, Mass., Feb 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Hospitals, healthcare organizations and patient groups across the globe will join the National Patient Safety Foundation in celebration of Patient Safety Awareness Week, March 2-8. The theme of the week, Patient Safety: A Road Taken Together, emphasizes a collective effort for safer health care through partnership among providers, patients, families and communities. Founded in 2002 by NPSF, this week is intended to raise public awareness about the work being done to improve patient safety and the importance of effective partnering to these improvement efforts. Community engagement provides a key focus for the week's efforts.

During Patient Safety Awareness Week 2008, NPSF will join forces with the World Alliance for Patient Safety, Patients for Patient Safety programme to focus on the issue of health literacy and effective communication as key factors for improving patient safety. NPSF's Partnership for Clear Health Communication will provide its Ask Me 3 program for dissemination through Patients for Patient Safety. This program, a health literacy initiative designed to assist with communication between patients and providers through a focus on 3 basic questions -- What is My Main Problem? What Do I Need to Do About It and Why is It Important for Me to Do This? and What are the Risks? -- has been translated into the six official languages of the WHO and will be disseminated worldwide through the Patients for Patient Safety Champions network as they work in partnership with these healthcare systems.

"Patient Safety Awareness Week is a call to action that promotes patient safety and the importance of partnership in improving safe outcomes," said Diane C. Pinakiewicz, NPSF President. "Effective communication between providers and patients is key to the type of partnership necessary for this work and we are pleased to be joined by the World Allian
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