Patient safety and Quality of Care in maternal and child healthcare in development settings (R-6622)

Suriname with a maternal mortality rate of 82.5/100,000 in 2011, belongs to the 5 countries of Central-America and the Caribbean with the highest rate. One of the main strategies suggested by the World Health Organization, as a solution to maternal mortality is working at the quality of care, of which patient safety is an integral part. Patient safety and quality of care as such are often not identified as main priorities in resource limited countries such as Suriname. Although individual healthcare institutions are working on these topics, this is not done in a structured approach. A literature review, comparing patient safety and quality of care strategies regarding maternal and child health in Suriname with international practices will be done. A standardized patient safety culture measurement will be done for the first time in Suriname, in order to assess the willingness, attitude and behavior of healthcare workers towards patient safety. This will serve as the bases for continued evaluation of patient safety practices. Furthermore the perinatal data collection, aggregation and analysis system will be inventoried and using available and newly collected data, the current situation in regards to maternal and child patient safety and quality of care will be made clear. During this process a structural perinatal registration will be set up to guarantee continued monitoring and evaluation. The last component in this proposal is the implementation of different interventions e.g. the WHO safe childbirth checklist, case analysis and audits of maternal deaths, training of health care workers, patient tracking to improve adherence to care. These will be evaluated on their effectiveness.

Keywords:patient safety

Disciplines:Public health care, Public health sciences, Public health services