WHO Collaborating Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Training, Muscat, Oman

The WHO Collaborating Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Training in Muscat, Oman was designated in August 2018. The centre focuses mainly on patient safety and health system research and development. The centre’s activities include hosting the global resource for best practices in patient safety and quality care with WHO's leadership to identify scalable solutions and systems leverages for improving patient safety and quality of care in the Region. It also provides education and training on core competencies of patient safety, in collaboration with WHO and other public/non-profit institutions, advocates for the integration of safety and quality goals in health policies and strategies, within the perspective of systems governance, advocates for integration of patients' safety teaching (e.g. WHO patients' safety curriculum guide) within the curriculum of academic health institutions in collaboration with WHO and its collaborating centres on quality and patient safety  while promoting research on patient safety and quality.

WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety Policies and Strategies, Saudi Arabia

The WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety Policies and Strategies in Saudi Arabia was designated in March 2020. It focuses mainly on patient safety. The Saudi Patient Safety Centre aims to support the implementation of the WHO global patient safety challenges with primary focus on medication without harm, through capacity-building in low- and middle-income countries. At the request of WHO and its Member States, it helps develop electronic tools to assess, measure and improve the patient safety culture. The Saudi Patient Safety Centre also supports WHO’s patient safety priorities through capacity-building on the role of health professionals in promoting safer care and WHO programmes that aim at promoting patient empowerment and community engagement for ensuring safer care, through the collection of lessons learned from patient safety initiatives.

Saudi Patient Safety Centre

Online courses

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and with a growing body of evidence and recommendations, WHO has been developing courses to enhance knowledge on disease control. As quality of health care is an integral part of the pandemic response, it is covered in Module 5: Maintaining quality care during COVID-19 in the course on the clinical management of patients with COVID-19.

PSFHF ToT workshop, Islamabad Capital Territory, February 2021

A 3-day ToT workshop on the third edition of PSFHF was organized. Many hospitals have shared their improvement plan for internal and external assessment in 2021.

PSFPC ToT workshop, Oman, December 2020

A 3-day TOT virtual workshop was organized by WHO-EMRO in collaboration with the Directorate General of Quality Assurance Centre, MoH and WHO Collaborating Center on Patient Safety in Oman. 50 Participants from Oman were invited to participate. A Training Needs Assessment (TNA) was conducted before the workshop to identify key priorities. The TOT aimed at introducing the PSFPC framework to participants and galvanize their uptake and application of the included standards in their primary care facilities while reflecting their feedback on feasibility of the criteria before piloting the assessment manual.

Role of PHC to maintain quality during COVID-19 expert meeting, EMRO, December 2020

Experts were invited to comment on and provide insight on EMRO’s technical report on the role of PHC in maintaining Quality services during COVID-19 pandemic, with focus on Low- and Middle-Income countries (LMICs) and settings of Extreme Adversity.

PSFHF course, Oman, July 2020

EMRO in collaboration with the Directorate General of Quality Assurance Centre, MoH and WHO Collaborating Center on Patient Safety in Oman organized a 5-day workshop to train surveyors on the third edition of PSFHI manual in support to countries in the region. To adapt to challenges imposed by COVID-19, the workshop took place virtually via Zoom.

45 Participants from Oman and Pakistan were invited to participate. The workshop aimed mainly at updating and training the healthcare professionals on amendments done in the third edition of the Assessment Manual, to enhance their skills on surveying the participating hospitals and to share experiences amongst participants/experts when it comes to patient safety.

Second expert consultation on quality and safety in extreme adversity settings in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, Doha, December 2019

WHO in collaboration with the Qatari Ministry of Public Health held the consultation on 11–12 December 2019 in Doha to draft an action framework for addressing quality and safety in extreme adversity (QSEA) settings and a national quality policy and strategy (NQPS) supplement on quality action planning in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable (FCV) settings.

The meeting’s overall objectives were to refine and validate the draft action framework based on the feedback from field tests and set the direction for the development of a recommended set of priority interventions for quality and safety in FCV settings.

The consultation convened a group of 20 experts from the Region and globally to discuss approaches to addressing quality and safety in emergency settings. The experts offered different perspectives that varied widely, including those of the heads of international nongovernmental organizations, academic staff from leading universities and research centres, hospital directors from emergency countries, experienced front-line health professionals, representatives of ministries of health in countries with FCV settings, and WHO staff from headquarters, regional and country levels.

Workshop on implementation of WHO quality indicators for primary health care in Libya, Tunis, July 2019

The World Health Organization – Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (WHO_EMRO) in collaboration with WHO/WCO Libya and Libya’s Ministry of Health has recently conducted a 5-day workshop on the implementation of the WHO quality indicators for Primary Health Care (PHC) in Libya. The workshop was held in Tunis, Tunisia, during the period from 22nd to 26th of July 2019. It adds to the steady steps that WHO-EMRO is persistently taking towards establishing quality PHC services across all Member States as a core element in pursuing Universal Health Coverage.

The workshop has been attended by 35 participants representing a broad range of key stakeholders who frame the PHC services at the operational level in Libya, including health care professionals, managers, focal points for quality, and representatives from the Ministry of Health. Additionally, quality experts and PHC managers from Tunisia were contributing to the workshop by sharing their experience and adding valuable inputs. The three levels of WHO were also represented, WHO-HQ, WHO-EMRO, and WHO/WCO Libya. All participants were given a space in discussions and actively involved in group-works in order to ensure practical outcomes that could truly reflect Libya’s context.

Driven by the needs in our Eastern Mediterranean Region, the workshop’s scope of activities extended to cover pilot-testing of the WHO-EMRO’s drafted Quality in Extreme Adversity Framework (QEA), as well as validating the newly developed WHO’s Primary Care - Health Facility Quality Assessment Tool (PC-HFQAT). It was of benefit to raise and evolve discussions around this new framework and tools, side by side with the quality indicators, which added a value of considering the emergency context in Libya.

Expert consultation on quality and safety during extreme adversity, Muscat, February 2019

The WHO Regional Office, WHO headquarters and the WHO Collaboration Centre for Quality and Patient Safety Training in Muscat, Oman, jointly held a two-day expert consultation on 17 and 18 February to address challenges and refine strategies for advancing quality and patient safety during situations of extreme adversity. There is increased awareness of the crucial role of quality in health care in improving health outcomes and that achieving universal health coverage will remain elusive if settings of extreme adversity are not taken into account. The meeting is part of the work of WHO to ensure the quality of health care services as a foundation for achieving universal health coverage in the Region, given its particular context.

Thirty-eight experts participated in the consultation, representing a wide variety of leading actors in the field, including experts from WHO headquarters, the WHO Collaboration Centre in Oman, WHO country offices of Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan, University of North Carolina, the World Bank, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), International Rescue Committee (IRC), Partners in Health (PIH), Oman’s Ministry of Health, and specialists from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

Workshop on implementation of WHO quality indicators for primary health care in Pakistan, Karachi, November 2018

WHO, together with the provincial health departments of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, held two 3-day workshops on the implementation of quality of care indicators for general physicians (GPs) from three pilot districts for the family practice approach from 15 to 17 November 2018 in Peshawar and from 19 to 21 November 2018 in Karachi.

The workshops aimed to introduce 34 regional quality of care indicators in a selected number of primary health care centres and provided participants with the opportunity to learn about the implementation of quality assessment and improvement tools and indicators.

Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative workshop in Pakistan, November 2018

The Punjab Provincial Health Department and Riphah Institute of Health Care Improvement and Safety, in collaboration with WHO, convened a 3-day training workshop on the implementation of the Patient Safety Friendly Hospital Initiative (PSFHI) from 5 to 7 November 2018 in Lahore, Pakistan. The participants were hospital managers from public sector and private hospitals in Punjab province, selected due to their commitment to implementing the Initiative in their hospitals. The workshop aimed to introduce the Initiative's tools for assessing and improving patient safety. Participants were trained on the Initiative's standards in five domains: leadership and management, patient and public involvement, safe evidence-based clinical practices, safe environment, and lifelong learning. During the workshop, the managers developed a road map for the institutionalization of a patient safety programme in their hospitals based on the PSFHI Manual. WHO will undertake an assessment of the hospitals after 6 to 8 months of implementation of the road maps, with the agreement of the hospitals.

Patient safety-friendly hospitals in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, January 2018

A three-day workshop on implementation of the patient safety-friendly hospital initiative was jointly organized in Saudi Arabia by WHO and the Saudi Patient Safety Center from 22 to 24 January 2018. The objectives of the workshop were to introduce the regional patient safety-friendly hospital initiative (PSFHI) and the associated tools for assessing and improving patient safety; to train teams from a group of hospitals to undertake self-assessment and improvement based on the PSFHI manual and tool kit; and to share successful experiences from other countries on how to implement and sustain a patient safety system at the hospital level.

The workshop was attended by 29 patient safety and quality focal persons from the country with representation from 10 provinces and different affiliations (public and private sectors). In addition, the Saudi patient safety center invited 3 participants from outside the country (2 from Pakistan and 1 from Palestine).

Implementation of the WHO Patient Safety curriculum in Oman, April 2017

A workshop on integrating the WHO patient safety curriculum into all health-related academic institutions was held in Muscat on 24 and 25 April 2017. The objectives of the workshop were to build the capacities of representatives from each college/institute of medicine, dentistry and allied health care sciences (government and private) on the integration of the WHO patient safety curriculum, and to establish a roadmap for rolling out the integration of the patient safety curriculum in all medical, dental and allied health care academic institutions. The workshop was attended by the deans of health sciences institutes and 2 faculty members involved in curriculum and course planning in 21 health sciences institutions in Oman (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and allied health).

The WHO patient safety curriculum guide was introduced in the academic institutions of Oman in 2012, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health of Oman. The Ministry requested WHO technical support for the integration of the WHO Patient Safety Curriculum in undergraduate training programmes of health-related academic institutions.

Joint workshop and field mission for patient safety and quality improvement, Muscat, October 2016

Increase awareness on the importance of patient, family and community empowerment and engagement, develop a clear roadmap to help guide the five-year strategic national plan on patient safety and quality improvement.

Regional meeting on “tools and standards to assess and improve quality of care at the primary care level”, Amman, May 2016

Discuss and finalize the assessment tool for quality at PHC level, consisting of 34 indicators covering access and equity, safety, efficiency, effectiveness, people centeredness and timeliness. And WHO workshop on how to increase patient engagement and empowerment.

Inter-Regional Technical Consultation on Best Practices in Patient Safety and Quality of Care in the African and Asia-Pacific Regions, Muscat, February 2016

WHO aims to provide a global platform for sharing experiences, tools, ideas, approaches and resources that support health care quality and safety improvement efforts. The meeting allowed sharing challenges and lessons learned from different regions.

Workshop for national research of adverse events, Jeddah, January 2016

WHO is providing support for the implementation of a national research study on adverse events in hospitals in Saudi Arabia.

Regional meeting on the principles and practice of healthcare accreditation, Cairo, December 2015

Situation analysis on healthcare accreditation programmes and alternative approaches in the region and agree on key action points to develop a roadmap for advancing quality improvement.

Regional workshop on: “Capacity building on use of Patient Safety Friendly Hospital manual and Patient safety” improvement toolkit, Tunisia, 2014

Expert meeting for the quality framework, Cairo, May 2014

Regional Consultation improving quality of care and patient safety in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, Jeddah, June 2014