News

• European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) fully supports WHO’s Medication without Harm campaign • Recommendations to reduce medication-related harm formed part of the 2010 ESAIC global patient safety project ‘Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology’ since signed by 94 countries • Other society initiatives present a broad response and include the key patient safety education programme Safer Care to Save Lives • ESAIC is also creating ‘peer networks’ connecting anaesthesiologists and critical care physicians to allow them to share vital patient safety knowledge and experience

Prof. Guy Haller The ESAIC is currently developing an extensive Patient Safety education programme, Safer Care to Save Lives. The ESAIC Essential Patient Safety Course (EPSC) is one part of this programme. It will be an online course aimed at providing key knowledge on patient safety. It is built on the basis of the overarching principles of the Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology. It is a training pathway aimed at providing key knowledge on patient safety in acute setti...

Prof. Jannicke Mellin-Olsen ESAIC will be organising its first World Patient Safety Awareness week from 12 until 19 September 2022, coinciding with the celebration of World Patient Safety Day on 17 September. On this occasion, Marie-Hélène Lattes interviewed Dr Jannicke Mellin-Olsen, ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee member and the driving force of the Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology. What are the main principles and aims of the Helsinki Declaration on Patien...

Alex Rawlings ESAIC Patient Safety and Simulation Project Manager As we start to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have a golden opportunity to shape our practice for the future. With PRiPSAIC, the ESAIC takes the next step after the Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology. PRiPSAIC works with industry partners, national societies of anaesthesiology and departments of anaesthesiology and intensive care to find and bring together ‘change champions’ and ambassadors for pa...

Alex Rawlings ESAIC Patient Safety and Simulation Project Manager When faced with the problem of continuing valuable simulation training during the pandemic, the ESAIC had to look for innovative solutions.  We had previously collaborated with Madrid’s University Hospital of Alcorcón, and its experienced high-fidelity simulation centre IDEhA, for the 2017 ESAIC Simulation Masterclass on Procedural Sedation and Ventilation Techniques. IDEhA is a space for virtual training in a simulation and t...

Alex Rawlings ESAIC Patient Safety and Simulation Project Manager The ESAIC Advanced Patient Safety Course is a new live course to teach patient safety tools to use in acute settings. We offer modern teaching using interactive group work and innovative 360-degree videos of key scenarios, followed by debriefing, to bring examples of critical situations to life.  The APSC forms a key part of the Safer Care to Save Lives Programme, an ESAIC Patient Safety Education programme. The Safer Care to Sa...

Daniel Arnal, Maria Wittmann ESAIC Patient Safety and Quality Committee It’s been ten years since the EUSOS study publication that highlighted a higher postoperative mortality than expected in Europe (4%) and a high variability between countries1. According to the European Commission, between 8% and 12% of patients admitted to hospitals in the EU suffer from adverse events in health care2. It’s been more than two decades since European anaesthesiologists, through the European Board of Anaest...

Prof. Peter Kranke  ESAIC Guidelines Committee Chair For many years the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) has been strongly supporting the development of high-quality, evidence-based guidelines as a tool to harmonise and improve clinical practice in anaesthesia, perioperative medicine, intensive care, emergency medicine as well as pain therapy throughout Europe. These guidelines are intended to serve overarching objectives. One frequently cited reason to develop gui...

Gabriel M.Gurman, MD Chief Editor This subject is far from being esoteric. It is an integral part of medicine in general, and especially of anaesthesiology.  In its 1999 report “To err is human: building a safer health system”, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published the shocking estimate that up to 98,000 annual deaths were caused by medical errors in the United States (1).  I hope to be excused for reminding banalities to our readers. Still, I feel the need to start by enumerating so...

After signing an MOU in 2019 at Euroanaesthesia Vienna, ESAIC and EACTAIC now further strengthen their professional relationship and cooperation by a formal signing of a Consensus Statement on Adult and Paediatric Fellowship Training in Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anaesthesia and Intensive Care and a document on cooperation between both societies for the launch of an ESAIC trainee and specialist observership programme in the field of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anaesthesia and Intensive Care. T...