What Will We Learn from the Paradigm Shift in Safety Science for Improving Patient Safety?

안전과학 패러다임의 전환과 환자안전의 개선

Patient safety remains one of the most important health care issues in Korea. To improve patient safety, we have introduced concepts from the field of safety science such as the Swiss cheese model, and adopted several methodologies previously used in other industries, including incident reporting systems, root cause analysis, and failure mode and effects analysis. This approach has enabled substantial progress in patient safety to be made through undertaking patient safety improvement activities in hospitals that are systems-based, rather than individual-based. However, these methods have the shared limitation of focusing on negative consequences of patient safety. Therefore, the paradigm shift from Safety I to Safety-II in safety science becomes the focus of our discussion. We believe that Safety-II will complement, rather than replace, Safety-I in the discipline of patient safety. In order to continuously advance patient safety practices in Korea, it is necessary that Korea keeps abreast of the recent global trends and development in safety science. In addition, more focus should be placed on testing the feasibility of new patient safety approaches in real-world situations.