Improving patient safety in clinical and laboratory practice

Patient safety involves a set of procedures taken to avoid incidents (unintended adverse events) in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, in order to ensure the desired treatment outcome. Possible adverse events in hospital treatment are three times more common among paediatric patients than among adults, especially when dosing medications. Patient safety can be considered one of the major challenges in healthcare, especially today when the world is facing a pandemic of disease COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease form 2019). In order the unwanted errors to be identified, they need to be defined and classified. Errors in clinical practice that affect patient safety can occur before patient treatment, during patient treatment (diagnostic and therapeutic errors), but also after patient treatment. Errors are caused either by the actions of health care staff (sometimes by non-health care staff ) or by the noncooperation of the patient at all stages of health care. Errors in laboratory diagnostics can occur in all phases of the laboratory cycle: in the pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical phase. The classification of possible clinical and laboratory unintentional and unwanted errors allows their identification, recording and implementation of corrective procedures, which will ultimately contribute to improving patient safety. Key words: MEDICAL ERRORS; CLASSIFICATION; CHILD; COVID-19; PATIENT SAFETY

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