World Patient Safety Day 2026 - BetterCare Action Wall
🏠Good practices and ideas for action from the BetterCare network. Each note is a genuine contribution from a member country: an initiative that is already working, or a proposal we could adopt to make care at home safer.
🚀 Add your voice to the wall. Every contribution counts: tell us what works in your country, or what we should start doing.
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Good Practice Spain
Caregiver support and training
RealityCare: immersive training for safer home care
RealityCare is an immersive VR programme with 18 scenarios that helps informal caregivers practise safer medication use and home care.
Training improved hand-hygiene performance by more than 80% and strengthens practical skills in a safe, realistic and repeatable environment.
RealityCare Team (UMH–FISABIO)
https://doi.org/10.2196/78882 -
Idea for Action Croatia
Caregiver support and training
Supporting working informal caregivers for safer care at home
Occupational health could identify caregiver burden among working informal caregivers and connect them with appropriate support.
Early support could reduce medication errors, protect caregivers’ health and promote safer care at home.
Hana — Occupational Health
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Good Practice TĂĽrkiye
Care coordination
Multi-Agency Student-Led Home Visits for Vulnerable Older Adults
University, municipality and NGO partner for student-led home visits providing psychosocial support, medication checks and wound monitoring.
It detects home risks early, refers patients to professional care or social services, and gives health students vital practical field experience.
Pınar Kaya
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Good Practice International
Caregiver support and training
BetterCare Podcasts for Safer Home Care
BetterCare podcasts share expert knowledge on home-care safety, medication errors and caregiver support through accessible multilingual episodes.
Short audio resources make practical safety knowledge easier to access and share across countries, professions, caregivers and languages.
BetterCare
https://cost-bettercare.eu/podcast/ -
Idea for Action Spain
Equity
A non-digital alternative for safe healthcare
Every digital care pathway should offer a simple alternative for people who cannot use health applications safely.
Telephone or face-to-face care can prevent missed follow-up, delayed help-seeking and exclusion due to limited digital skills.
Daniel Monasor
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.20130 -
Good Practice Malta
Person Safety in Health and Social Care
Set up a symposium for all stakeholders in Malta covering health and social care. This solicits dialogue in relation to person safety.
It enables all stakeholders — service providers, academics and regulatory bodies — to relate to and understand person safety contextually.
CareMalta Group
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Idea for Action TĂĽrkiye
Recognition of deterioration
Traffic-Light Safety Plan for Home Exercise in Childhood Cancer
Children with cancer and caregivers receive a traffic-light guide showing when home exercise can continue, be reduced or paused, or should stop.
An individualised plan can help families recognise warning signs, make safer day-to-day activity decisions and build caregiver confidence.
Fulya Ä°pek-Erdem
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Idea for Action Portugal
Hospital-to-home transitions
Listening to the Person’s Experience to Prepare for a Safer Return Home
Listen to people’s experiences after returning home to improve nursing care and promote safer hospital-to-home transitions.
At home, unmet needs may become visible. Learning from people’s experiences can improve person-centred nursing care and safer transitions home.
PatrĂcia Câmara — PhD Nursing Student, Universidade CatĂłlica Portuguesa, Porto; Nursing Professor, SĂŁo JosĂ© de Cluny School of Nursing, Madeira
https://www.esesjcluny.pt/en/projetos -
Idea for Action Serbia
Medication safety
A Home Safety Plan for Every Chronic Patient
Before discharge, each chronic patient and caregiver get a 1-page plan covering medicines, warning signs, contacts and follow-up, and confirm understanding.
A shared plan can reduce medication errors, missed follow-up and delayed response when a patient’s condition worsens at home.
Milena Santric Milicevic / Nevena Veljković — Genial.rs, Patient Safety Serbia
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Good Practice Canada
Just Culture e-learning
Learn how to foster an atmosphere in which everyone feels safe to discuss errors and safety concerns without fear of blame.
The free e-learning and additional resources were created for healthcare workers and also apply to family caregivers, who are informal care workers.
Health Quality Alberta
https://hqa.ca/resources-for-improvement/just-culture/just-culture-courses/just-culture-workshops/ -
Good Practice Spain
Caregiver support and training
Safety Recommendations for Informal Home Care
Safety recommendations tailored to informal caregiving in home settings, developed through a Consensus Development Conference among experts.
The 288 resulting recommendations are intended to inform the development of safety guidance for informal caregiving in home settings.
Nida Abed / FISABIO, Vanessa Neves / Unifesp
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/nur.70074 -
Idea for Action TĂĽrkiye
Digital solutions
Building Self-Efficacy for Safer Digital Self-Management at Home
Healthcare professionals should support adults with chronic disease through hands-on digital health guidance, practice, feedback and goal setting.
Our study found self-efficacy was associated with better self-management and greater intention to use digital health services among adults aged 50+.
GĂĽlsĂĽm AĹźan
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph23070943 -
Good Practice International
Equity
Define to protect: Who is an informal caregiver?
A consensus of 61 experts from 27 countries and diverse professions provides an updated definition of informal caregivers.
A unified definition enables consistent identification of informal caregivers, guiding policy, training, support and safer home care.
BetterCare European Expert Consensus
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-08540-y -
Good Practice Israel
Digital solutions
One press, help is on the way
Emergency call buttons give older adults a simple and reassuring way to call for help when needed.
With one press, an alert can reach a family caregiver or emergency response service — supporting safety, independence and peace of mind at home.
Dr. Layla Suliman
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Idea for Action Israel
Caregiver support and training
Caregiver Safety Debrief After Home-Care Incidents
Offer family caregivers a brief, non-blaming debrief with a healthcare professional after a home-care incident or near miss.
It supports caregiver recovery, identifies learning needs and turns incidents into practical changes that may prevent recurrence.
Dr. Mirit Cohen, Department of Nursing, University of Haifa
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Idea for Action TĂĽrkiye
Caregiver support and training
Safe Patient, Safe Caregiver: A Brief Home Care Safety Check
Before discharge and during early follow-up at home, family caregivers receive a brief, structured safety check assessing their knowledge and prepared
Identifying caregivers’ knowledge gaps, concerns, and support needs early can help prevent avoidable harm and improve safety at home. Supporting careg
Sevilay Şenol Çelik / Koç University School of Nursing
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Good Practice Japan
Medication safety
Release of JQ’s monthly alert in campaign colour
JQ has been running a national reporting and learning system since 2004, issuing a monthly alert and more. We include orange on the alert this month.
It focuses on anti-diabetic drugs which need discontinuation before surgery. The alert will be distributed across my country through many channels.
Shin Ushiro / Japan Council for Quality Health Care
https://www.med-safe.jp/contents/english/index.html -
Idea for Action Spain
Digital solutions
Nurse-led support for safe digital care at home
Nurses support patients and caregivers in using health apps to manage medication, monitor symptoms and recognise when to seek help.
It can reduce medication errors, missed follow-up and delays in responding to deterioration, while preventing digital exclusion.
Daniel Monasor Ortola
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.20130 -
Idea for Action Ireland
Falls and home risks
Safety Crosses at home
The safety cross was traditionally used in industry to represent employee safety. It is a calendar in the shape of a cross with 31 days marked on it.
Managed by the entire healthcare team (or family). Colour codes used: event-free day green, yellow indicates a near miss and red = injury/harm.
Mark White, RCSI
https://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/content/13/4/e002964 -
Good Practice Czechia
Falls and home risks
Privacy-preserving IR monitoring for home care
Low-resolution IR sensors detect movement and lying persons at home without video cameras or wearables. The solution is based on local edge computing.
It protects privacy, works passively in the background and can alert caregivers to serious risk situations.
VĂt JanovskĂ˝, CTU Assistive Technology
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Idea for Action TĂĽrkiye
Caregiver support and training
Teach-Back for Safer Home Rehabilitation
Caregivers demonstrate home exercises and explain key precautions and when to modify, stop or seek professional advice.
Teach-back can reveal misunderstandings before discharge, reinforce safety messages and improve caregiver confidence at home.
Fulya Ä°pek-Erdem
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Idea for Action Finland
Care coordination
Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety at Home
The Helsinki Declaration calls for home care to be recognised as a care setting with specific safety risks, support needs and responsibilities.
It offers a shared European roadmap to close the hospital–home safety gap and strengthen support, coordination and protection for caregivers.
BetterCare
https://cost-bettercare.eu/news/after-helsinki-meeting-2026/ -
Idea for Action Serbia
Caregiver support and training
Caregivers professional support
Upon accessing healthcare services, any family member accompanying the patient receives a written invitation to free training and a telephone number.
Our study of 200 caregivers shows that they suffered heavily emotionally, but the burden was lower for those who were trained and supported by experts.
Milena Šantrić Milićević & Nataša Rakić
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Idea for Action Italy
Caregiver well-being
Who Cares for the Caregivers?
Caring for those who care is just as important as caring for patients themselves.
Caregivers’ lifestyles and well-being are just as fundamental as those of the patients they support.
Alice Masini, University of Eastern Piedmont
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Idea for Action Brazil
Caregiver well-being
Caring for Those Who Care
A booklet with simple self-care guidelines for older adult caregivers, promoting physical, mental, and emotional health in everyday life.
The material is effective because it provides practical and easy-to-apply guidance, encouraging caregivers to set aside time for themselves.
Meiry Fernanda Pinto Okuno / Projeto de extensão Recreação para pessoas idosas
https://instagram.com/recrear.unifesp -
Idea for Action Finland
Falls and home risks
Caregiver-Based Early Warning System for Home Safety Risks
Family caregivers use a digital tool to report changes in mobility, balance and daily functioning that may indicate increasing fall risk.
Digital reporting enables earlier identification of risks and supports timely preventive actions by health and social care professionals.
Minna Tiainen / Team Finland
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Idea for Action Finland
Caregiver support and training
Caregiver Alert System
A digital platform identifies increasing caregiver burden through regular self-assessments and prompts support when needed.
Timely support may prevent caregiver exhaustion and improve safety for both caregivers and care recipients.
Minna Tiainen / Team Finland
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