La puissance du « A » pour la Patient Safety Awareness Week 2025 : sensibilisation, évaluation et action

March 9, 2025, will mark the start of the 23rd Patient Safety Awareness Week (PSAW), which began in 2002 with the vision of a small group of people, including a patient and family advocate whose child died due to preventable medical error. It was sponsored by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) and continues today under the leadership of IHI following the 2017 merger between NPSF and IHI. PSAW is recognized each March within and beyond the United States. It serves as a global call to action and reminder that for safety to be realized, it must be embraced as the core value of individuals and organizations across health care, and coproduced in the spirit of togetherness across the full community of patients, families, health care leaders, and every member of the health care workforce.  

Organizations around the world leverage PSAW and World Patient Safety Day, begun by the World Health Organization (WHO) and recognized each year on September 17, to embrace the communities of patients and families, the public, and all who work in health care to reinforce and reset what it takes for patients and those who care for them to be safe, experience the best care and caring possible, and free from harm. What’s new for PSAW 2025, and what do I believe matters for achieving constancy of purpose of safety? It’s the power of “A.”  

• Awareness: Raise awareness for yourself, your organization, and the communities served on what matters for constancy of purpose and transformation of safety by reviewing Safer Together: A National Action Plan to Advance Patient Safety, the CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM), and the aims of the HHS National Action Alliance for Patient and Workforce Safety (NAA). Regardless of whether your organization is subject to the PSSM, each of these initiatives offers essential guidance to realize and sustain safety.  
• Assessment: Convene a team, inclusive of patient and family representation, to assess your organization’s current strengths and opportunities for improvement using the Safer Together Organizational Self-Assessment Tool. If applicable, this assessment will help gauge your organization’s performance compared to the PSSM. 
• Action: Informed by your self-assessment, take action to create and enact improvement plans, develop measurement and evaluation strategies, and identify accountability owners and processes to steward safety progress.  

IHI is kicking off PSAW 2025 in San Diego with its annual Patient Safety Congress, the premiere patient safety event of the year, with conference tracks, sessions, and networking events leveraging the foundational areas of Safer Together and domains of the PSSM. Whether you’re a new or more seasoned safety professional or champion, you’ll leave Congress with practical resources to build and lead safe and healthy cultures, coproduce safety with patients and families, support the safety and well-being of the health care workforce, and foster resilient systems that withstand the test of time. 

Join like-minded professionals at the IHI Patient Safety Congress

The call for PSAW 2025 is clear and alignment on safety has reached new heights. It’s time for everyone in health care, in partnership with patients, families, and the communities we serve, to leverage the power of “A” and operationalize what matters for safety. Dive into IHI’s free tools and resources to fuel your power of “A” to bolster awareness, conduct an assessment to guide your opportunities to improve structural, cultural, leadership, and operational performance in your organization, and take meaningful action to move safety from an aspiration to a realization for all.