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The Starter Kit has proven to be a valuable resource for anaesthetists who want to learn and teach about Patient Safety and the Helsinki Declaration. This information was launched in 2013 and is now being updated.  Below you can find:Â
- Starter Kit 1: an updated reading list including articles published on the three-year Helsinki Declaration Follow Up Research Project.
- Starter Kit 2: basic PowerPoint presentations covering essential topics.
- Starter Kit 3: PowerPoint presentations that can be used by those wanting to present patient safety related topics to their own organisation.Â
The ESAIC has begun a new project to update these materials into a five-part eLearning programme. More information will be released about this in the near future. Â
Starter Kit 1 – Reading Material
- HD_1_Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology
- HD_2_Helsinki Declaration Follow Up Project Infographic
- HD_2_Helsinki Declaration Follow Up Project Infographic
- HD_3_HD – Map of Distribution of Signing Countries
- HD_4_The Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology
- HD-5_Patient safety and the role of the Helsinki declaration
- HD_6_An arrow pointing somewhere Qualitative study of the Helsinki declaration on patient safety and
- HD_7_EJA Special Article_Ten years of the Helsinki Declaration on patient safety
- HD_8_Final report ‘Evaluation of the extent of implementation of the Helsinki Declaration’ 22 July 2020
- HD_9_Executive Summary Final Report
- HD-10_Departmental_Patient_Safety_Report
- Human performance limitations
- Incident reporting in anaesthesiology
- Managing the aftermath of critical incidents
- Morbidity in anaesthesia_Today and tomorrow
- Simulation and CRM
- The contribution of labelling to safe medication
- Vincent Essentials of Patient Safety 2012
- WHO Patient Safety Curriculum Guide
- Relevant Links
Starter Kit 3 – Presentations for other organisations to use
- WHO MC TOPIC 1 What is Patient Safety
- WHO MC TOPIC 2 What is Human Factors
- WHO MC TOPIC 3 Understanding systems and the impact of complexity on patient care
- WHO MC TOPIC 4 Being an effective team player
- WHO MC TOPIC 5 Understanding and learning from error
- WHO MC TOPIC 6 Understanding and managing clinical risk
- WHO MC TOPIC 7 Introduction to methods for quality improvement
- WHO MC TOPIC 8 Engaging with patients and carers
- WHO MC TOPIC 9 Minimizing infection through improved infection control
- WHO MC TOPIC 10 Patient safety and invasive procedures
- WHO MC TOPIC 11 Introduction to medication safety
ESAIC launches Patient Safety Starter Kit 3/7/2013
Following the 2010 Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety, the joint EBA/ESA Task Force for Patient Safety is launching a Safety Starter Kit containing essential resources to help raise safety standards in anaesthesiology across Europe.
European Society of Anaesthesiology launches safety kit to help raise anaesthesia safety standards across Europe
The European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (ESAIC) is to launch a safety starter kit containing a wide variety of essential resources to help raise safety standards in anaesthesiology across Europe. The kit will be distributed on a memory stick at this year’s Euroanaesthesia 2013 congress in Barcelona, Spain (1-4 June). The kit has taken three years to assemble, and was put together following the landmark 2010 Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety, a statement of EBA (European Board of Anaesthesiologists, section of UEMS) and ESAIC targeting the many factors that contribute to patient safety before, during, and after surgery.
“We didn’t want the Helsinki Declaration to be something that had bold aims but didn’t accomplish much,” says Dr. Sven Staender, Chairman of EBA’s/ESA’s Task Force For Patient Safety. “We’ve spent three years working with a range of experts both within the ESAIC and across our member countries’ national associations to produce these essential materials to guide good practice and improve safety in our specialty.”
The Helsinki Declaration states that steps must be taken to address the numerous human and technical factors that can affect patient safety, including drug and syringe labelling, checking equipment, difficult or failed intubation, bleeding, infections, and anaesthetic toxicity. It also requires anaesthesiology departments to collect data in order to produce annual reports on patient safety, so that improvement in safety practice can be tracked and exchange in knowledge be accomplished. The declaration currently has 297 signatories from across Europe, including ESAIC National Society members, individual hospital anaesthesiology departments and anaesthesiologists as well as supporting industrial companies.
To cater for the multiple aims of the Helsinki Declaration, the safety starter kit contains the following:
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Selected Articles of the publication “Safety in Anaesthesia” (Best Practice and Research Clinical Anaesthesiology)
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The book on Patient safety by internationally recognised expert Charles Vincent
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A proposed template for an anaesthesia departmental safety report
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The text of the original Helsinki Declaration
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Hazard warnings published in countries that alert anaesthesiologists to important adverse events (examples provided from the UK, Germany and Switzerland).
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Powerpoint presentations plus audio podcasts of essential aspects of patient safety. Topics covered include e.g. human limitations in the operating room, and introduction to critical incident reporting
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Powerpoint presentations for basic lectures on patient safety / risk management including topics such as medication error, good communication and team work, simulation, engaging with patients and carers, and understanding clinical risk.
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Checklists for emergency management in the operating room, for situations such as those involving newborns, anaphylaxis, hypertension, hypotension etc.
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The WHO Safe Surgery Checklist
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A list of links to important internet resources
“These tools should help bring the Helsinki Declaration to life,” adds Staender. “The starter kit is a collection of necessary resources to help fulfil the aims of the Helsinki declaration and to make it readily and easily available and useful for anaesthesiologists across Europe, and indeed Worldwide.”
Of course, many of the practices and tools referred to in the starter kit may be commonplace in many hospitals in Europe. But ESAIC hopes that this starter kit will support hospitals, particularly those in the continually developing nations of Eastern Europe, that not yet have the standards of the Helsinki Declaration fully established.
Following the Euroanaesthesia congress, the ESAIC will publish the kit in a dedicated section of its website (www.esaic.org), and will also begin work on implementation of the Helsinki Declaration on a national level. Dr. Staender will remain in his role as Chairman to see the project through the next three years. “This must be done in a joint venture with the European Board of Anaesthesiology, with the National Anaesthesiologists Societies Committee of ESAIC and the individual national societies themselves,“ he says. “We will be working on a national or even departmental accreditation process that shall demonstrate the adherence to the principle of the Helsinki Declaration.“
Contact Dr. Sven Staender.