Patient Safety Day 2025, 'Patient safety from the start!'
This year, the theme is “Safe care for every newborn and every child”, with the slogan “Patient safety from the start!”, recognising the vulnerability of this age group to risks and harm caused by unsafe care.
Objectives of World Patient Safety Day 2025
- Raise global awareness of safety risks in paediatric and newborn care in all health care settings, emphasising the specific needs of children, families and caregivers.
- Mobilise governments, health care organisations, professional bodies and civil society to implement sustainable strategies for safer care for newborns and children, as part of broader patient safety and quality initiatives.
- Empower parents, caregivers and children in patient safety by promoting education, awareness and active participation in care.
- Advocate for strengthening research on patient safety in paediatric and newborn care.
World Patient Safety Day calls to action
The NHS Patient Safety Strategy
The NHS Patient Safety Strategy sets out how the NHS will support staff and providers to share safety insight and empower people – patients and staff – with the skills, confidence and mechanisms to improve safety. Getting this right could save almost 1,000 extra lives and £100 million in care costs each year.
The strategy is evolving over time to ensure it is supporting the NHS to meet its current challenges and priorities, remains relevant and can impact on the areas where need is greatest.
The National Patient Safety Team are supporting the NHS to achieve the strategy’s aims through a series of programmes and areas of work. All of this work relates to the strategy’s foundations of ‘patient safety culture’ and ‘patient safety systems’, and the three strategic aims ‘insight’, ‘involvement’ and ‘improvement’.
Martha’s Rule is a patient safety initiative to support the early detection of deterioration by ensuring the concerns of patients, families, carers and staff are listened to and acted upon. Martha's rule has recently been rolled out across acute hospitals in England to support NHS patient safety.
World Patient Safety Day 2025 is dedicated to ensuring safe care for every newborn and child and calls on parents, caregivers, health practitioners, health care leaders, educators and communities to unite in action to prevent avoidable harm and ensure a safe, healthy future for all children.
