After the covid-19 pandemic, Europe is facing other crises such as the conflict in Ukraine and its repercussions in terms of migration flows and inflation. All these crises have the potential to act as threats to public health, since they can result either in an increase in the volume of care to be provided or in budgetary constraints that may impact on the proper functioning of health care institutions. 

In this context, there may be a temptation to put aside the issues of patient safety, considering that the continuity of care systems is the priority and that, at a time when securing care is already difficult, working to improve the quality of care is idealistic. 

EUPSF is convinced that quality of care and Patient Safety must continue to be defended now more than ever.

 

Lowering standards of care, settling for care and not the best possible care, is perilous. Rather than being part of the continuous search for improvement, we are moving towards degradation, with successive renunciations, in small progressive steps, one renunciation facilitating the next. It is going back in time, reversing the historical dynamic of medical progress defended by generations of practitioners.