September 17 marks World Patient Safety Day 2026, a global initiative led by the World Health Organization to raise awareness and inspire action to reduce preventable harm in health care. This year’s theme, “Safe Care for Noncommunicable Diseases”, recognizes the unique safety challenges faced by patients with chronic conditions who often receive care across multiple settings and over extended periods of time.

The campaign slogan,” Safe Care for Life!”, highlights the importance of safe, coordinated, and patient-centered care throughout the continuum of care.

As health care organizations work toward high reliability and zero harm, World Patient Safety Day reaffirms our continued learning, transparency and improvement. By participating in the Northwest Safety and Quality PSO (NWSQ PSO), we strengthen high reliability principles and patient safety efforts by sharing experiences, identifying risks, learning from events and near misses and advancing evidence-based improvement strategies.

Consider engaging staff, leaders, patients and families in daily or weekly activities that promote safer care:

  • Conduct safety huddles focused on chronic disease management and care transitions.
  • Share lessons learned from patient safety events, good catches and improvement initiatives.
  • Highlight medication safety, diagnostic excellence and communication practices that reduce patient harm.
  • Recognize teams and individuals who demonstrate a commitment to patient safety.
  • Engage patients and families in discussions about their role in safe care and shared decision-making.
  • Promote participation in the NWSQ PSO learning opportunities, collaboratives and peer-sharing activities.
  • Review organizational safety culture goals and identify actions to strengthen reliability and resilience.

Patient safety improves when we learn together. The NWSQ PSO supports a trusted environment to identify risks, share best practices and accelerate quality and safety improvements for every patient, every day.

Let’s recognize World Patient Safety Day 2026 and continue advancing a culture of safety across our region. (Tina Seery)