Philosophy

of the Medical Process and Patient Safety Administrative Unit

Patient safety has always been of particular importance at Hannover Medical School (MHH) and is demanded, supported and practiced by the Presidium. In doing so, MHH relies on its traditional values and the important principle of "Primum nihil nocere" and thus determines for itself how this is optimally implemented - taking into account the requirements of patients, employees, customers and partners of MHH.

The continuous optimization of patient safety is based on MHH's safety culture, integrating legal requirements with traditional values. This means achieving greater transparency, accompanied by a cultural change that enables the establishment of a safety culture with the aim of learning from mistakes, avoiding repetition and identifying and closing gaps, as well as adapting existing structures and instruments where necessary, taking into account the optimal allocation of resources.

Patient safety is the product (result) of all measures at MHH aimed at protecting patients from avoidable harm in connection with medical treatment.

The core tasks of the Medical Process and Patient Safety Administrative Unit are derived from the above-mentioned objectives. This includes the further development and adaptation of methods to patient care, the piloting, implementation and establishment of the methods, as well as training and events for MHH employees in the entire field of patient safety. Another focus is the management, support and monitoring of projects and measures to optimize processes.

Safe processes mean making processes manageable for employees, avoiding and reducing latent errors, facilitating factors, system errors and gaps in safety barriers. From the employees' point of view, this requires enabling risk identification in ongoing processes and carrying out a process-oriented root cause and risk analysis of errors, near-miss incidents, incidents and claims with the aim of making the processes and the system safer.

Due to the organizational structure of Medical Process and Patient Safety at MHH, a central Administrative Unit of Patient Care with decentralized units (Patient Safety Teams in the Departments), a secure and fast Communications and information flow is guaranteed. The level of penetration and internal exchange is strengthened by on-site presence, training, information and events for all employees. National and European exchange is ensured as part of the annual "Patient safety - current status" conference and through active participation in the Patient Safety Action Alliance and the German Society for Clinical Process Management.