By Chioma Obinna

The need for health professionals to strive to provide quality healthcare to clients through the provision of safe, effective, timely and patient centered care was at the front burner during the 2nd Annual Conference of the Society for Quality Health Care in Nigeria (SQHN) last week in Lagos.

The health experts which includes both local and international -based health professionals said improving patient safety is all about taking stock of the providers’ actions.

They cited an example with the action of Florence Nightingale when during the Crimean war she cut mortality at the British camp from 42 percent to 2 after statistical studies she made showed soldiers dying not from their wounds but from infections from sewer and poor hygiene.

At the conference with the theme; “Improving Quality Standards in the Nigeria Healthcare System” and attended by over 200 health professionals from various fields, Dr. Segun Adeniyi from Ampersand Logistics, UK maintained that clinical audits and error reporting are the main cruxes of patient safety but without adequate documents management clinical audit might be impossible and error reporting used for punitive purposes only.
According to Adeniyi in his paper entitled, “Patient Safety: Crossing the Quality Chasm, the Technology Way”, said “Document management, audit is easy and error reporting is spontaneous and could be anonymously used for constructive reviews”

At current practice, it is difficult aggregating medical information for meaningful use or study and becomes more as the number of patients swells and pares piles up. But by employing simple paper technology we will be re-engineering our practices without changing the age-long way of doing things but we will almost be world standard compliance and our practices future – ready”

In his paper entitled; “Incorporating patient safety into the Nigerian Healthcare System’ from the Imperial College London, Mr. Christopher Ente noted that there have been increasing interests in patient safety due to increasing awareness of adverse incidents in healthcare highlighted by the media.
He regretted that the practice of patent safety is yet to be implemented in developing countries like Nigeria.

Speaking on Infection Control and Prevention in Public Sector Hospitals in Nigeria: An integrated Approach”, Dr. Christoph Hammelman who opined that it is the responsibility of governments at levels to provide effective and safe health services stressed the need for government to said government and donors should alleviate sufficient funds for comprehensive infection prevention and control.