On the 13–16 May, 2024, a WHO mission team with representatives from the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties and the Saudi Patient Safety Centre came together to augment the patient safety education agenda across Saudi Arabia. The WHO Regional Office facilitated the mission in close collaboration with the WHO country office. Health educators and the deans and vice-deans of health colleges in universities, as well as academic university hospitals, represented the specialties of dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and allied health specialties. Medical students took part in online interviews to gauge their perspectives on current activities in patient safety during their education.
The objective of the mission was to conduct a situational analysis of current patient safety practices on the ground at medical facilities and academic institutions across Saudi Arabia. From this analysis, the facilitators and leaders from the three organizations further investigated the gaps and identified potential solutions for implementation.
The report offers an analysis of the data collected during the mission using facilitated focus groups and workshops. The resulting recommendations reflect key findings and align to examples of implemented solutions from different contexts that may be used as a roadmap to facilitate implementation for advocacy organizations, academic institutions and health education providers.