12 September 2025

“Patient safety from the start”

Ahead of World Patient Safety Day next week, on 17^th September 2025, this year’s focus is on safe care for every newborn and child. Alix Walker, head of our Clinical Negligence department considers the importance of such a day.

It is easy to focus on safe healthcare in England & Wales alone, as clinical negligence lawyers we are met with concerns over baby and child safety every day.  Year after year internal hospital investigations are carried out to report on ways to improve care and reduce the number of errors made, yet the NHS continue to pay out millions of pounds every year to compensate those affected, sometimes to children with catastrophic injuries.

The same concerns also extend far and wide across the world which is why the World Health Organisation (WHO) have called for urgent action to eliminate “avoidable harm”, seeking to prioritise patient safety and have set out to tackle this by encouraging the following;

1. Raise global awareness of safety in care provided to newborns and in a paediatric setting
2. Promote wider organisations and governments to introduce sustainable strategies for safer care
3. Empower care givers with education and awareness
4. Encourage patient safety research

Trusted UK charity, Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA) recently estimated that around 6% of the calls they had received to their helpline so far in 2025 were in relation to families facing the impact of unsafe treatment in children.

There is a need to join a global call to protect children and their right to have safe and high-quality healthcare which is why we are supporting World Patient Safety Day this year.

#WorldPatientSafetyDay #WPSD2025