BC’s Patient Safety Strategy: Your Care, Our Commitment
A five-year plan to strengthen patient safety and quality of care.
Health Quality BC developed BC’s Patient Safety Strategy: Your Care, Our Commitment, a five-year plan to strengthen patient safety across the province. As the first comprehensive provincial patient safety strategy in Canada, it provides the health system with a shared direction for improving safety by learning from experience, strengthening trust and working together to prevent harm.
A Road Map for Improved Patient Safety
Building a culture of safety and trust across BC’s health system.
While BC’s rate of hospital harm has been consistently decreasing and is lower than the national average, patient safety remains a concern. BC’s Patient Safety Strategy: Your Care, Our Commitment provides a clear five-year plan for the system to work together to create a health care system where safety is felt, lived and upheld in every care interaction by patients, families and health care workers alike.
By connecting organizations, initiatives and people, the Strategy will help prioritize collective efforts and create strong, safe systems. Together with partners across the province, this Strategy will move BC closer to fostering a culture of curiosity, compassion and continuous learning, where listening drives meaningful and lasting change.
The result will be a health care system where safety is embedded in every aspect of care, leading to optimal health outcomes and experiences for all patients, families and health care workers.
Bringing BC Together Around Safer Care
Connecting people, evidence and learning to strengthen safety across the health system.
Since 2008, HQBC has provided system-wide leadership to improve the quality of care for every person in British Columbia. Through collaborative partnerships with health authorities, patients, and those working within the health care system, HQBC promotes and informs a provincially coordinated, patient-centred approach to quality.
With deep experience in patient safety and strong partnerships with patients, families, care teams and health leaders, HQBC is uniquely positioned to steward this province-wide strategy. Together, we’re creating conditions for safe, more reliable care for everyone in BC.
Building BC’s Patient Safety Strategy Together
BC’s Patient Safety Strategy: Your Care, Our Commitment is a shared roadmap to strengthen safety and quality across BC’s health system. Developed with input from patients, families, health care professionals and researchers, it reflects diverse perspectives and real-world experiences from across the province.
The strategy connects existing efforts and identifies new opportunities for collaboration and improvement. It complements local and regional quality and safety plans by providing a provincial framework for shared learning, consistency and partnership.
About the strategy:
These elements form a shared foundation that strengthens safety and reliability across BC’s health system.
The Vision for Safer Care
A health care system where safety is felt, lived and upheld in every care interaction by patients, families and health care workers alike.
Achieving this vision means fostering a culture of curiosity, compassion and continuous learning, where listening to those closest to care experiences guides meaningful and lasting change.
Together, we can make safer care a shared reality in BC.
Six Pillars for BC’s Patient Safety Strategy
The Strategy is built upon six interconnected pillars based upon a foundation of safe care resulting in a comprehensive approach to enhancing patient safety across the province.
Empowering & Engaging Patients & Families
Patients and families are active participants in patient safety harm reduction.
Empowering & Engaging
Health Care Workers
Health care workers work within a positive patient safety culture.
Anticipating & Responding to Patient Safety Risks & Events
Proactive and responsive health care systems that effectively anticipate potential risk, respond swiftly to safety events and learn from both successes and failures to continuously improve patient safety.
Reducing Common Causes of Preventable Clinical Harm
Identify and reduce the most impactful sources of preventable harm in clinical care through targeted quality improvement initiatives.
Measuring What Matters for Safety & Learning
A comprehensive, coordinated, province-wide Patient Safety Observatory for identifying, collecting, analyzing and disseminating patient safety data and insights, enabling evidence-based decision-making and continuous improvement in patient safety.
Providing Effective Leadership & Governance
Committed leadership and robust governance structures that prioritize, support and drive continuous improvement in quality and patient safety across the health care system.
Explore BC’s Patient Safety Strategy
This five-year plan outlines the priorities, principles and actions guiding safer care across BC. It provides a foundation for collaboration, learning and improvement at every level of the health system.
By working together, we can strengthen safety, trust and well-being for everyone who gives and receives care.
