RESEARCH

Patient-safety science is a relatively new discipline, having developed in the last 20-to-30 years. Its importance is evident because preventable harm in health care is now recognized as being among the leading causes of death and disability.

Current research and expert opinion in patient-safety science is that preventable harm is rarely the result of intentional or careless actions of individual health-care workers in their work at the bedside—the “sharp end”—rather it arises from policies, decisions, and practices at the system level—the “blunt end.”

Human factors affecting judgement and contributing to errors at the levels of policy, governance and management decision making are are seen as the root cause of most avoidable health-care harm because they create conditions where harm is inevitable.

Despite this finding, most patient-safety interventions to date are targeted toward clinicians (usually in acute care) rather than toward leaders and policy-makers whose decisions create systems and conditions that enable avoidable harm and fail to stop it.

The goal of the PSCP is to broaden the lens for knowledge development to address not only the “blunt end” roots of avoidable health-care harm, but to pay particular attention to the causes and consequences of avoidable harm to rural, indigenous, immigrant, marginalized, disadvantaged, and other underserved populations.

In addition, we believe more patient safety research needs to focus on community care, long-term care, mental-health care environments and other settings beyond health system boundaries.

With its focus on voluntary and broadly based participation, knowledge sharing, and development, and its inclusion of citizen scientists in planning and conducting research, the PSCP will intentionally address current gaps in existing knowledge and serve as a complementary resource in the landscape of existing work on patient-safety science in Canada.