DHA organizes seminar to celebrate healthcare quality week

The seminar is part of a four-day Quality Week Celebration, across all DHA hospitals and speciality centres. The event organised by the Hospital services sector at the DHA, is under the theme "Patient Safety, Our Priority,"

Dr Mohammad Al Olama, CEO of the Hospital Services Sector initiated this celebration to promote the importance of achieving improved patient care outcomes and healthcare delivery systems across all DHA hospitals.

Dr Al Olama said:

"At DHA, patient safety is one of our core principles and quality, risk management and performance management are integral aspects which help us ensure that patient safety remains our priority. The DHA is working to ensure that we further strengthen and develop our risk management processes as well as our performance management initiatives. We are in the process of developing a unified risk management process for all the DHA hospitals."

Mr. Zakaria Al Attal , Director of Quality & Performance Department, Hospital Services Sector, DHA said: "Quality and performance management initiatives play an integral role to ensure that patient safety is always maintained. The DHA is in the process of introducing an electronic system for identifying, prioritizing and managing risk. In addition to this, we at the DHA are constantly investing in training our healthcare practitioners about patient safety initiatives."

Ms. Ann Edmondson, Risk Manager, Hospital Services Sector at the DHA said that in recent times a lot of countries are buying into the theories of risk management as it is proved to improve patient care significantly. "This is a concept that has gained momentum in recent years and is embedded firmly in many countries around the world."

She said that DHA's unified risk management initiative will enable like-for-like comparison of high, medium and low risk throughout the DHA.

Moreover, the DHA is also working with the Institute of Healthcare Improvement Patient Safety Bundles.

Dr Zakaria said, "Bundles are a structured way of improving the process of care and patient outcomes. We will identify bundles relevant to our risk profile and introduce them."

He said this one of the steps the DHA is the process of introducing to strengthen patient safety.

The organizers of the four day event on patient safety are The organisers of this event are Dr. Abdul Aziz Abdulla AlZarooni, Assistant Head of Quality Office, Rashid Hospital, Dr. Saba Naseem Khan Quality Coordinator, Rashid Hospital, Ms Nujood A.Aziz Al Khloofi, Communication Manager, Hospital Services Sector, Ms. Merlyn Patricia Dsouza, Quality Coordinator, Al Wasl Hospital, Ms. Usha Mary Varkwy, Quality & Accreditation Officer, Dubai Hospital, Dr. Amer Mohamed Al Zarooni Acting Director, Airport Medical Center and Ms. Samah Abdel Hamid Darwazeh, Head of Office, Thalassemia Center