The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has announced its United for Patient Safety campaign, designed to “spark dialogue and promote action” to improve the safety of both patients and healthcare providers. The campaign will be centered around Patient Safety Awareness Week, which is scheduled to take place on March 13-19, 2016.

Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, MPH, NPSF president and CEO, said there have been some positive signs in the healthcare system in regards to patient safety, but there is still plenty of work to do.

“We have seen some improvement in patient safety, but 1 in 10 patients still experiences a hospital-acquired complication, and many more harms occur in outpatient settings, where most care is provided, so there is still much work to be done,” Gandhi said in a prepared statement.

A 2015 report from the NPSF, “Free from Harm: Accelerating Patient Safety Improvement Fifteen Years after To Err Is Human,” presented eight specific ways the organization said patient safety can be improved. Those recommendations including ensuring that those in leadership positions established and sustained a culture of safety, increasing funding for research in patient safety and implementation science, and showing support for those in the healthcare workforce.

“Although our understanding of the problem of patient harm has deepened and matured, this progress has been accompanied by a lessening intensity of focus on the issue,” an executive summary of the report read. “Patient safety must not be relegated to the backseat, proceeding haphazardly toward only those specific harms currently being measured and targeted for improvement by incentives. Advancement in patient safety requires an overarching shift from reactive, piecemeal interventions to a total systems approach to safety.”

The NPSF was founded in 1997. More information about Patient Safety Awareness Week, including how to download educational materials, can be found on the organization's United for Patient Safety website.