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Patient safety group to spread message worldwide

Quality Improvement Monitor, June 1, 2007

A new group called Consumers Advancing Patient Safety (CAPS), which unveiled its Web site two months ago,has been tapped by the World Health Organization (WHO) to help build a global network of consumer patient-safety champions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

An average of one in 10 hospital patients worldwide is the victim of some form of preventable harm that can result in severe disability or death, the paper reported.

Sue Sheridan, a CAPS board member who is working on the WHO project, suffered two adverse medical events in her family, the Journal said. Her son Cal's neonatal jaundice went untreated, leading to severe brain damage, and her husband, Pat, died after a cancer diagnosis wasn't communicated, resulting in a six-month delay in treating his condition. Sheridan told the Journal that one of the last things her husband said to her before his death was, "Never give up on patient safety."

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