Abstract
Introduction: Patient safety is a major concern in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Organizations and investigators are alike in searching for ways to improve delivery and safety of patient care. Many have reported that the existence of a patient safety and risk management system will have an effective impact on the overall patients' outcomes. Aims: To study the effectiveness of a patient safety model on patient safety indicators when implemented in a university hospital. Methods: A task force constituted by various patient safety experts was established to design a practical concept of patient safety management based on a nine steps model and applied by all hospital departments. Patient safety indicators (780) were monitored over a four years period and the model's effectiveness was analyzed on 40 selected indicators. Results: A statistical significant improvement by 67.5% (27/40) of initially measured patient safety indicators was evidenced mainly in the domains of peri-operative mortalities, neonatal mortality, return to surgeries, healthcare associated infections, safety and medication use, blood transfusion reactions, cardio pulmonary resuscitations, patient adverse events, and occurrence variance reporting. However, 12.5% (5/40) of the indicators of hospital standardized mortality and specific mortality were not improved by the model's implementation while others, 20% (8/40) of the patients safety indicators were maintained as their initial baselines were satisfactory. Conclusions: The implementation of a patient safety management model was found to be effective in improving patient safety practices (PSP) as well as patient safety indicators (PSIs) and finally patient outcomes. [Bahjat Al-Awa, Isabelle Devreux, Agnes Jacquerye, Abeer Alhazmi, Hussam AlBaz, Hamed Habib and Osama Rayes. Conceptualization of a Patient Safety Management Model as Practical Approach toward Benchmarking and Improving Healthcare Outcomes. Life Science Journal 2012;9(3):774-780]. (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 110