Patient safety in light of the human rights framework

Abstract

This article aims to draw up a theoretical contribution to sustain the view that patient safety is interconnected with the obligation of States to preserve the lives of their citizens and that patient safety is an expression of the right to health, from the perspective of international human rights, comprising the human rights treaties and international jurisprudence emanating from human rights bodies located at the United Nations, the Inter-American Human Rights System and the European Human Rights System. With the aim of developing the patient safety based on the right to life and the right to health, we have adopted a bibliographical and a documentary research, highlighting the review and analysis of reports and decisions made by human rights organs. In conclusion, the right to safe healthcare, derived from the right to life and the right to health, should be subject to state regulations, that is, we argue that the state should establish a certain cast of general measures of patient safety, in order to explicit the right to safe healthcare, as one of the human rights of the patient. Indeed, the implementation of a patient safety culture is a State obligation; its disregard in defining it as a result of a legislative, public policy or budget lack, involves an international human rights violation.