Abstract:

One of the most fundamental components of health care quality is the patient safety (World Alliance for Patient Safety, 2004). Patient safety is a priority for every health care system that follows specified standards by ensuring and improving the quality of health care services as one of the main concerns of managers of health care systems (Westat, Sorra, Famolaro, et al., 2010; Stratton, Blegen, Pepper et al., 2004; Bahadori, Ravangard, Aghili et al., 2013).

Patient safety is an essential and vital component of quality nursing care. However, most nations’ health care system is prone to errors, and can be detrimental to safe patient care, as a result of basic systems flaws. A variety of stakeholders (society in general; patients; individual nurses; nursing educators, administrators, and researchers; physicians; governments and legislative bodies; professional associations; and accrediting agencies) are responsible for ensuring that patient care is safely delivered and that no harm occurs to patients (Ballard, 2003).

Most hospitals across the U.S. put ever-changing compliance and quality improvement standards toward the top of their list of organizational priorities. This is important for not only providing a safe environment for the delivery of patient care, but also for assuring that operations are aligned with standards set forth by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (TJC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (Reigle, 2013).

In Qatar, safety is a fundamental principle of patient care and an important component of quality management. Its improvement demands a complex system-wide effort, involving a wide range of actions in performance improvement, environmental safety and risk management. Patient safety involves nearly all health care disciplines and sectors, therefore it requires a comprehensive multifaceted approach to identifying and managing actual and potential risks and finding broad long-term solutions for the health care system (Qatar Supreme Council of Health, 2015).

As part of efforts towards achieving quality patient care in Hamad Medical Corporation, the Best Care Always campaign was launched in October 2013. This marked an important milestone in Hamad’s journey to achieve the safest, most effective and most compassionate care for its patients. The campaign’s rationale is a systematic, coordinated and focused approach to institutional quality improvement, designed in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) - the world leader in the science and practice of healthcare improvement (Hamad Medical Corporation 2013/2014 Annual Report).

In the first year, forty multi-disciplinary teams from wards, critical care units and operating theaters in all eight hospitals have started to test and measure selected changes, with the aim of identifying and implementing evidence-based system improvements that can be applied across the organization. Best Care Always initiative is designed to encourage a culture of transparency and openness to report where new safety measures can be introduced and care can be improved, and provide staff with the know-how to respond (Hamad Medical Corporation 2013/2014 Annual Report).

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