On 17 September 2026, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh will join patients, healthcare professionals including our members and fellows, and organisations around the world to mark the 7th World Patient Safety Day. This year the World Health Organisation has set the theme as ‘Safe care for noncommunicable diseases’, supported by the slogan “Safe care for life!” The campaign objectives are to:
Raise Awareness: Highlight noncommunicable disease (NCD) patient safety risks across a continuum of care.
Engage Patients: Involve those with lived experience to identify and co-develop solutions.
Encourage Stakeholders: Integrate patient safety into policy, strategies, and programmes to champion the care of patients with NCDs.
Support Clinicians and Healthcare staff: Improve diagnosis, medication safety and meaningful patient engagement.
To uphold the objectives of World Patient Safety Day, the College will publish a series of blogs covering a broad range of NCDs. These include cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory conditions, neurological and oral disease for example. NCDs affect people of all ages and account for a substantial proportion of illness and disability, causing 75% of deaths globally. People living with these conditions are particularly at risk as they may require care from multiple professional teams, in different settings, and over many years. Patient safety must therefore extend beyond a single appointment, procedure or episode of care. This is well aligned to the NHS England’s new Modern Service Frameworks which aim to provide structured, measurable, and equity‑focused models for delivering high‑quality care and modernising service operations across complex systems.
Safety Throughout the Care Journey
World Patient Safety Day campaign identifies five important stages of the care journey:
Prevention and risk reduction
Early detection and diagnosis
Treatment in healthcare settings
Self-care and long-term management
Care coordination and transitions
Each stage presents different safety risks and opportunities for improvement. Prevention, screening and early diagnosis can reduce avoidable illness and support timely treatment. When treatment is needed, safety relies on clinical expertise alongside effective communication, teamwork, shared decision-making and well-designed systems. For those living with a condition over many years, safe care also requires appropriate monitoring, reliable follow-up and clear information about medicines, medical devices and warning signs. Notable risks can arise during transitions of care when patients move between health care professionals, departments, and organisations; important information may be lost, follow-up arrangements may be unclear, or responsibility for the next stage of care may not be understood.
For surgical and dental teams, this means seeing the whole patient and the whole journey, not just a procedure being undertaken.
Patients as Partners in Safety
Kate Tyler, our patient safety representative on the College’s Patient Safety Committee provides the most important perspective: the patient’s view. Her blog contribution brings lived experience to the centre of our campaign. She writes as a patient contributor exploring the impact rare congenital conditions and the importance of transforming transitions between paediatric and adult services, which can be defining moments affecting lifelong outcomes.
People living with long-term conditions develop considerable knowledge of their health, their treatment and the way their condition affects their everyday lives. Listening to this expertise is fundamental to safer care. Patients should feel able to ask questions, raise concerns and take part in decisions. Their families and carers may also identify subtle changes or emerging risks that are not immediately apparent to healthcare professionals. Meaningful involvement is more than providing information; it requires clinicians to listen with curiosity, communicating clearly, and recognising patients as partners in designing and delivering safer care. However, patient involvement must not become the transfer of responsibility for safety onto patients. Healthcare professionals, organisations and wider health systems retain the responsibility to provide safe, coordinated and accessible care.
Oral Disease: A Major Noncommunicable Disease
As a Consultant in Restorative Dentistry oral disease cannot be excluded from this campaign, with caries and periodontal disease the commonest noncommunicable diseases with impact on the most vulnerable of our society. Dental caries and periodontal disease are largely preventable and can be managed effectively with early detection. However, poor access to NHS dentistry in the UK remains an escalating patient safety concern, allowing disease to remain undetected and untreated until it becomes more complex. People may live with prolonged pain, infection, difficulty eating or sleeping with reduced quality of life. Progression, untreated oral disease may require urgent or life threatening emergency treatment. Other aspects of dental disease worth focus are the impact of poor oral health on general health which includes diabetes and potentially cardiac and pre-term babies among others.
Access to dental care should therefore be understood not simply as a question of service availability, but as an important part of prevention, health equity and patient safety.
Exploring Safe Care for Life
Over this week of World Patient Safety Day we will share a series of blogs written by seven of our expert surgeons exploring patient safety across different conditions, treatments and stages of care.
Andrew Baldwin evaluates the complexities of the head and neck cancer pathway and implications of patient safety.
Andrew Martindale considers the challenges of providing reliable follow-up and surveillance when cancer is managed as a chronic disease, including superficial bladder, prostate and kidney cancers. In addition he will examine the potential harms associated with long-term urinary catheters.
Phil Turner focusses on patient safety in major joint replacement surgery, where preparation, multidisciplinary working, operative care, rehabilitation and follow-up must come together to support safe outcomes.
Nishan Fernando will examine why patient safety in cardiac surgery relies on multidisciplinary team care, demonstrating that safe outcomes depend not only on individual technical expertise but also on communication, coordination and the collective performance.
Andrew Robertson and Alexander Walker will explore the long-term management of morbid obesity and the role of weight-loss surgery. This contribution considers surgery as one part of a continuing care pathway rather than an isolated intervention.
Dimitrios Damaskos presents the lifetime management of massive abdominal wall hernias, highlighting the importance of continuity, long-term planning and care centred on the individual patient.
Although these blogs focus on very different areas of healthcare, they are connected by a common message: safe care depends on recognising the whole person, understanding the complete care pathway and working across professional and organisational boundaries.
Continuing the Conversation
The principles highlighted by World Patient Safety Day will also be reflected in the College’s inaugural Surgical Safety Summit on 29 April 2027. The Summit will bring together people, practice and purpose through education, collaboration and innovation, with the shared aim of delivering safer, patient-centred care.
World Patient Safety Day provides an important opportunity to raise awareness, but safer care must be pursued every day. Throughout this campaign, we invite our members, fellows and the wider surgical and dental teams to ask:
Are we seeing the whole patient and the whole care journey?
Are patients genuinely involved in decisions about their care?
Does important information reach the right people at the right time?
Are our systems supporting safe long-term care and reliable follow-up?
What practical change could we make to improve safety for our patients across these pathways?
By listening, learning and working together, we can make healthcare safer at every step throughout every life and realise ”Safe care for life!”
Claire Morgan
Consultant in Restorative Dentistry & Patient Safety Specialist
RCSEd role: Chair of Royal College of Surgeons Patient Safety Committee & elected Dental Council member
