Читать книгу Pathy's Principles and Practice of Geriatric Medicine - Группа авторов - Страница 291

The practice of medicine, aptly described by Samuel Johnson as ‘the greatest benefit to mankind’, has been and always will be associated with inherent risks.¹ This has been acknowledged for as long as medicine itself has existed: the ancient Greeks’ words for ‘kill’ and ‘cure’ were similar, and the Hippocratic Oath contains the promise ‘to abstain from doing harm’, later adapted by Thomas Sydenham into the famous phrase ‘primum non nocere’ or ‘first do no harm’.

Perhaps surprisingly, it has only been relatively recently that these risks, their causes, and ways to ameliorate them have been subjected to rigorous academic study. One of the earliest specific observations of patient harm was made in the nineteenth century by Florence Nightingale regarding infection in hospitals, a new and devastating problem at the time. In the 1960s, more systematic studies of hospital‐associated harm began to be carried out, initially driven by the development of litigation. In more recent times, perhaps triggered by high‐profile events such as the Bristol heart inquiry and landmark international reports such as ‘An Organization with a Memory’² in the UK and To Err Is Human ³ in the USA, patient safety has become the focus of much attention. It is now recognized globally as one of the top priorities in healthcare; and as our understanding of healthcare‐related harm deepens, our ability to improve patient safety grows.

In this chapter, we describe some of the current knowledge about patient safety and how it relates to the care of older people.