Sharing stories. Connecting people. Making healthcare safer.

Patient Safety Case Study: Inadvertent overinfusion of NORepinephrine

Programming infusion pumps has been recognized as a high-risk activity and a source of adverse events. Infusion pumps can look similar but function differently for reasons such as inconsistent software versions, leading to use errors and potential for patient harm....

Continuing education for pressure ulcer prevention: Taking the pressure off! (Part 3) at Interior Health

Pressure ulcers are a common medical problem that negatively impact patients’ lives, causing pain, scarring, and possibly death. In this third article of our Let’s take the pressure off! series, we’re pleased to highlight the Skin and Wound Care Practices team from...

An interview with patient safety leaders Carl Macrae and Annemarie Taylor

Carl Macrae is a senior research fellow with the University of Oxford and a respected advisor on patient safety to the National Health Service (NHS) and other healthcare organizations around the world. He has devoted much of his career to improving safety and...

Optimizing pediatric patient transfers

Parents of a sick child in the Emergency Department (ED) feel a sense of relief when the healthcare team steps in, but it can also be a critical moment in terms of safety. The complexity of patient handovers – when a patient is transferred from one care setting to...

Standardizing observation levels for safer mental health care

As part of an overall strategy to promote personal and environmental safety for patients admitted to psychiatric settings in Fraser Health, best practice guidelines and a regional policy for levels of observation are in place across Fraser Health Mental Health and...

Anticipating and preventing medication error traps

Multi-agency and multidisciplinary problem solving: An increasingly common scenario in healthcare. During an emergency C-section, under time constraint, the anesthetist intended to give the patient succinylcholine, however the drug given was actually cisatracurium....

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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.