IX Spanish conference on patient safety in primary care: “Challenges and strategies”.

see full report

The IX Spanish Conference on Patient Safety in Primary Care took place in Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid on May 13th 2016 with the theme “Challenges and Strategies in patient safety in primary care”.

More than 150 primary care professionals met together to share patient safety activities, and to discuss and make new proposals to enhance patient safety in primary care.

As in previous years the Conference was organized jointly by, the Spanish Society for Family and Community Medicine (SEMFYC), the Spanish Society for Quality in Healthcare (SECA), the Federation of Community and Primary Care Nursing (FAECAP) and the Spanish Society for Primary Care Pharmaceuticals (SEFAP). In addition, this year they were joined by the regional association of those national societies:- the Madrid Association for Healthcare Quality (AMCA), SoMaMFYC (Madrid Society of Family and Community Medicine) and the Regional Health Department and SERMAS (Madrid Healthcare Service) and the University Hospital San Carlos that provided us the venue free of charge. Finally, we also have the collaboration of the Ministry of Health, Social Policy and Equality through the General Directorate for Quality and Cohesion.

The aim of the conference is to maintain a specific discussion forum to share experience on addressing patient safety in primary care.

Patient Safety and Primary Care has already made a grand tour, since we celebrated our first conference in San Sebastian in 2008. And, as every year, it offers a unique opportunity to meet again and to share experiences to improve patient safety in primary care.

The Strategy for Patient Safety 2015-2020 in the Spanish National Health Service was approved by the Spanish Inter-territorial Council of the National Health Service (July 29, 2015 available here.

This Spanish National Strategy is being implemented in each one of the 17 Spanish regional health services. Therefore, we decided to run a panel to discuss with well-known experts their proposals for deployment. Hence the theme of the conference was: "Challenges and Strategies on Spanish Patient Safety in Primary Care".

It was chaired by Dr Yolanda Agra-Varela, Head of the patient safety area in the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs and Chair of the technical group in charge of the review the Spanish National Strategy. She made a brief summary of the new strategy for 2015-2020 and introduced six different speakers (Dr Josep Miralles. Dr Beatriz Iglesias, Dr Rafael Bravo, Dr Sergio Minue, Dr María-del-Mar Fernández, Dr Alberto Pardo) who made a reflection on new challenges in different topics. (Video recording available here.)
(more information on the panel and links to their speeches on Youtube in full attached report)

After the panel discussion, we had the opportunity to attend the presentation of all contributions. 91 abstracts about primary care experiences were submitted to the conference. The main topics were medication safety (24%), reporting clinical cases to learn (18%), and detection and analysis tools (11%).
The scientific committee made careful assessment of all of them to give the "Dr Fernando Palacio on Patient Safety improvement in Primary Care" awards to the best contributions:

- First award on “teaching incidents”: I have got a flu, what can I take? Authors: Castelo-Jurado Marta, Alonso-Fernández Jesus et al. Federica Montseny Health Centre and Valdebernardo Health Centre. Servicio Madrileño de Salud (Spain).

- Second award: Impact of adverse events on the second victims, valued by healthcare managers and quality coordinators. Authors: Marcos-Calvo, María-Pilar; Astier-Peña, María-Pilar on behalf of Second Victims Spanish National Research Project. Universidad Miguel Hernández Elche (Spain).

- Third award: Late rejection after liver transplant medication error by changing formulation of Tacrolimus. Authors: Martínez-Sanz, Henar; Garcia-Amado García MJ et al. Health Centres of Valdebernardo, Angela Uriarte, Dr Tamames and General Direction of Pharmacy. Servicio Madrileño de Salud (Spain).

In the afternoon the following three hour simultaneous workshops were run (see full report for more details):

1. Giving support to second victims in health centres. Workshop sponsored by SEMFYC

2. Performing a systematic review of medications for patients under polypharmacy. Promoting medication’s adherence.

3. UNE 179003 Norm.

The global assessment was good but there is still plenty of room for improvement. We are looking forward to our next year Conference.