Conceptos básicos sobre seguridad clínica

The patients safety is one of the quality dimensions of the health care. This is a topic that has been address for a long time in the quality field. Nevertheless in the last decade, different studies and reports have demonstrated the great impact in the morbidity and mortality of the patients. These results, added to the increasing citizens participation, in their health care, makes patients safety a priority for the health policy. Published studies, they have been first orientated to establish the importance of the problem in different countries, and later to suggest and test diverse improving strategies. The authors of this paper introduce the modern concept of clinical safety, changing the previous approach of medical errors, evolving from a model centred on the professional, to one centred on the system, where the premise is that the errors are expected and are visualized as consequences and not as causes. For that reason the analysis of the problems and the review of the latent conditions of the errors, is fundamental tool for its management. Also the article comments on the different paradigms to address adverse events: clinical and epidemiological, legal and citizens paradigms. Finally a description of the principal initiatives to improve of the safety, in the national and international level is made and the common denominator based on a model is presented prevent and minimize the risk of the patients.