Sharing stories. Connecting people. Making healthcare safer.

Vanessa’s Law and mandatory reporting of serious adverse drug reactions and medical device incidents

Have you heard of Vanessa’s Law? Officially known as the Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act, Vanessa’s Law is named after Vanessa Young, a fifteen-year-old girl who died of a cardiac arrhythmia after being prescribed Prepulsid® (cisapride) for a stomach...

Putting patient safety first during CST Go Live

Ah, change. We #lovehate it, don’t we? It can be refreshing, energizing, and full of promise. It can also be stressful, challenging, and uncertain. And no one knows this better than the many dedicated staff who have been involved with implementing Clinical &...

Recognizing patient safety stars

“Learning depends critically on the less visible social processes of inquiry, investigation and improvement that unfold around incidents.” Would you agree? Carl Macrae presented the above viewpoint in his British Medical Journal article titled The problem with...

Getting a handle on hazards

Have you ever noticed something at work and thought, “Well, that doesn’t look safe”? Maybe you found the narcotic cupboard unlocked, or saw that the crash cart wasn’t prepped correctly, or spotted dirty equipment in the same storage room as the clean equipment....

2018: A year of feedback and reflection

The holiday season is upon us! We can hardly believe it, but 2018 is quickly approaching its finale. As always at this time of year, we find ourselves considering the past year’s events, challenges, and accomplishments, as we strive toward our common goal of...

Trauma mortality review offers province-wide opportunities for improvement

Our two most recent blog stories on BCPSLS Central provided updates on exciting new tools that were launched in 2017. In August, we outlined early successes of BCPSLS re:act, highlighting its Leading Practice award for Excellence in Patient Engagement for...

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Mission & Vision

Our mission is: To make health care safer for all British Columbians by fostering a culture of safety, shared learning and continuous system improvement.

Our vision is: Safe health care for BC: No needless harm.

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Who We Are

BC Patient Safety & Learning System (BCPSLS) is a web-based tool used by approximately 100,000 health care providers across BC to report and learn about patient safety events, near misses and hazards. BCPSLS has fostered improvements in patient safety and quality of care in all health care settings since its inception in 2008.

Today, we are focused on streamlining data collection and output, enhancing learning across our health care system and improving the quality of our modules and tools.

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What We Do

Over 400 safety event reports are submitted to BCPSLS each day from across the province. This data is allowing us to identify safety concerns and target quality and safety improvements where they’re needed most. To date, over one million safety event reports are in the BCPSLS database. Data summaries provide a rich basis for learning and improvement to over 10,000 healthcare leaders across BC.