Patient Safety

The 2nd EURIPA Rural Health Forum held in Romania in 2011 focused on  “Establishing and Maintaining Quality in Rural Family Practice”and plenary speakers included Professor Aneez Esmail (Professor General Practice at the University of Manchester   and Chair  of theEuropean Patient Safety Network) and Professor Tina Eriksson (Chair of WONCA Europe Quality Network EQuiP). 

The LINNEAUS Euro-PC collaboration is a co-ordination action funded by the Euroepan Framework 7 research programme and its main focus is to build a network of researchers and practitioners working on patient safety in primary care across the European Union.  The lead partner is the University of Manchester which has supported a literature review to examine the impact of isolation and rurality on patient safety in primary health care settings in Europe.  This has been followed by a workshop in September 2012 with members of EURIPA,  EQuiP and the Linnaeus project  to explore the issues for rural primary care further. Over the 2 day period the attendees discussed gaps in knowledge, the challenges, the opportunities and how best patient safety could be addressed in rural practice.  The presentation that set the scene for the two days of discussion can be found here.

One of the outcomes for the Manchester workshop is the Rural Proofed Manchester Patient Safety Framework (MaPSaF) tool.

Members of the Rural Patient Safety Working Group were: