World Patient Safety Day 2026
We’re marking the World Health Organisation’s annual World Patient Safety Day today, 17 September.
The slogan, ‘Safe care for life’ emphasises the importance for everyone to receive the best and safest care they possibly can, from before they are born, and throughout the rest of their lives.
Across our organisation, we’re involved in areas of health and care for people of all ages, to ensure the best possible outcomes.
At Healthcare Improvement Scotland, we provide assurance through our maternity inspections, our evidence helps sets the maternity standards across the country, and this all ties in with our improvement work. These three elements show how we are all working together for safer care.
We carry out inspections of maternity services in acute settings. This includes obstetric-led or consultant-led hospital or maternity units. The focus for our inspections are the factors that contribute to the safe delivery of maternity care.
We have published perinatal guidelines, which cover screening and treatment for women or birthing parents who are at risk of, or experiencing, a mental health condition.
Not only do we inspect the care, we also provide improvement support. Our Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Perinatal work has been co-designed to support improved outcomes. The current aims of the programme are to:
- reduce neonatal mortality and morbidity
- improve the recognition, response and review of the deteriorating women and birthing people
- reduce stillbirths
- understand variation in caesarean birth rates
We also carry out regular inspections, regulation and reviews of both public and private hospitals and health and care facilities.
Additionally, we work to ensure those who receive x-rays, radiotherapy and other treatments are safe, through our Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations (IR(ME)R) inspections. These ensure that patients receive a safe amount of radiation during their treatment.
Our broader Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) is a national quality improvement programme that aims to improve the safety and reliability of care and reduce harm.
The SPSP has three core components:
- SPSP Essentials of Safe Care
- SPSP Programmes of work
- SPSP Learning system
We work with health and social care services to improve the safety and reliability of care and reduce harm, with the SPSP’s work applying to everyone in Scotland.
If you missed the recent SPSP event, you can watch the recordings from our plenary session, Essentials of Safe Care in action – a people-led approach to achieving safe care.
As we age, we become more vulnerable, and our Focus on Frailty programme plays an important role to help those who need the most assistance, aiming to improve access to health and social care.
The programme brings together best practice, evidence and lived experience.
Our programme for 2026-2027 focuses on:
- Proactive community services to support people to live well in the community and avoid hospital admission
- Acute hospital frailty services
- Integration and pathways between community and hospital
The examples highlighted give just a flavour of what we do; our work extends beyond World Patient Safety Day. Our purpose is to drive the highest quality care for everyone in Scotland, every day of the year. We exist to lead improvement in the quality and safety of health and care for the people in Scotland using our skills and knowledge to tackle the quality challenges being faced.
Thank you to everyone working to make care safer.