The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge and threat the world and humanity is facing today. Health care systems across the world are overwhelmed, stretched, under extreme pressure, with health care workers working tirelessly in these unforeseen and extremely difficult circumstances. Provision of care in these highly pressurized situations or in suboptimal working environments leads to many inherent safety risks. Thus, risks to patients and health workers during this pandemic are higher than usual. There is a lot of information on country experiences which we can learn from, however, still only limited information on what is the impact on patient safety is, both for the patients with COVID and also other ‘non-COVID’ patients, and on the health workers.
This webinar provided an opportunity to learn from experiences in Greece, Switzerland and Spain, looking at patient safety implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and response by front-line health workers and/or the policy-makers at national, subnational or organizational level.