1. Students and Researchers

Purpose: This track aims to engage and inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals by encouraging university students and researchers to develop and submit innovative ideas and solutions for patient safety.

Description: This track is for students and researchers in healthcare-related fields. Participants are invited to present projects, research, or initiatives to improve patient safety. Creative thinking and use of new technologies, processes, or educational tools are encouraged to strengthen safety practices.

Topics:
All issues related to patient safety.

Criteria:

• Innovation and solutions,
• expected impact on patient safety,
• feasibility and practicality of implementation,
• clear methodology,
• addressing key challenges and trends in patient safety.

2. Patient Engagement for Their Safety

Purpose: This track honors initiatives that work to improve patient participation in care for their own safety through programs, projects, strategies, or innovative technologies that actively involve patients in co-designing safety strategies.

Description: Focuses on improving patient and family engagement in developing high-quality, integrated, and people-centered health services. Treating patients as partners in healthcare leads to significant gains in safety, satisfaction, and health outcomes.

Topics:

• Engaging patients in designing safety policies and strategies,
• practical projects to enhance communication between care providers and patients,
• improving long-term patient health and well-being,
• utilizing technologies that empower patients,
• supporting community involvement and empowers patients for safety.

3. Maternal and Newborn Safety

Purpose: This track aims to highlight the achievements of those who make significant progress in improving the safety of maternity and midwifery services by implementing new and innovative programs or technologies. The goal is to reduce maternal and newborn mortality rates, minimize risks and harm during childbirth, and improve the quality and safety of healthcare provided to women and newborns.

Description: This track has strong focus on improving continuity and safety in healthcare, given the substantial burden of risks and harm that unsafe care poses to mothers and newborns.

Topics:

• Promoting respectful care for safe childbirth.
• Reporting and analyzing safety incidents during childbirth.
• Preventing and managing postpartum hemorrhage.
• Reducing unnecessary and harmful practices affecting women and newborns during birth.
• Training on safe caesarean protocols and strengthening the capabilities of healthcare workers.
• Improving detection and management of high-risk pregnancies in low-resource environments.
• Enhancing the safe use of medication and blood transfusion during childbirth.
• Improving outcomes of newborn screening and genetic management.

4. Medication Safety

Purpose: This track aims to recognize those who make significant progress in improving medication safety by implementing programs, projects, strategies, or innovative technologies that ensure the safe use of medications without causing harm.

Description: Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are major causes of preventable harm in healthcare worldwide. The economic and psychological burden of unsafe medication care is also substantial and cannot be ignored. Therefore, medication safety is widely used in healthcare interventions.

Topics:

• Improving medication safety during care transitions.
• Reducing risks in high-risk situations.
• Decreasing inappropriate pharmacy practices.
• Reporting medication errors and learning from them.

5. Training for Patient Safety (in partnership with the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties)

Purpose: This track focuses on initiatives aimed at improving training, effectively integrating patient safety concepts, and demonstrating excellence in patient safety training.

Description: Training is an essential requirement for all healthcare professionals. The healthcare sector is constantly evolving, and today’s best practices can change quickly. As a result, continuous training is necessary for all healthcare practitioners, starting from trainees, to ensure high-quality and safe patient care.

Topics:

• Integrating patient safety learning and practice into educational and training curricula.
• Innovative strategies for training and education in patient safety, such as interprofessional education.
• Creating a culture of collaborative learning based on the needs of practitioners, addressing knowledge, skill, and attitude gaps by applying patient safety standards.
• Training interventions to enhance leaders’ perceptions of patient safety.
• Organization-based training programs that measure skill development, behavior change, and improvement in organizational outcomes.

6. Choosing Wisely

Purpose: This track aims to highlight the Choosing Wisely initiative and honor successful projects that implement this approach.

Description: This track focuses on selecting projects within the healthcare sector that apply the Choosing Wisely initiative. The initiative seeks to enhance communication between doctors and patients to reduce low-value and unnecessary interventions by empowering patients to choose safe, evidence-based care, and avoid repeating tests or procedures that have already been completed.

Projects can be recognized for successfully applying Choosing Wisely initiatives and achieving noticeable results in one of the following fields:

• Emergency Department
• Primary Healthcare
• Pharmacy
• Radiology
• Laboratory
• Other areas

7. General Track for Patient Safety

The award in this track recognizes those who make significant progress in improving patient safety by introducing new and innovative systems, programs, initiatives, or technologies. These projects aim to achieve high-quality results and demonstrate best practices in areas such as diagnostic safety, surgical safety improvement, or other important topics including but not limited to:

• Innovation in diagnostic and surgical techniques
• Improving patient safety through technology
• Mental health in the workplace
• Patient safety in primary and remote healthcare
• Safety in urgent and emergency care and referrals
• Enhancing care for the elderly and home healthcare services

8. Infection Control and Prevention in Healthcare organizations

Purpose: This track aims to recognize individuals, teams, and healthcare institutions in the Kingdom that have made measurable progress in preventing, early detection, and effective management of bacterial sepsis, recognizing it as a major challenge to patient safety and quality of care. This track aligns with Saudi Vision 2030, the National Transformation Program, and the standards of the Saudi Patient Safety Center and the Ministry of Health, aiming to enhance care quality and reduce infection-related complication and mortality rates in hospitals and healthcare centers.

Description: Healthcare-associated infections are life-threatening emergencies caused by excessive immune responses to infections, leading to organ dysfunction and potentially progressing to shock and multiple organ failure. Infections present a challenge in hospitals, especially among the elderly, newborns, pregnant women, and patients with chronic diseases or immune deficiency. This track encourages programs that show concrete improvements in early sepsis detection rates, reduced mortality, and enhanced patient experience, considering the specific needs of the Saudi healthcare system context.

Topics:

• Early recognition and rapid response
• Implementing early screening protocols and tools in emergency departments, intensive care units, and inpatient wards
• Applying nationally approved infection prevention bundles such as CAUTI, CLABSI, SSI, and Sepsis
• Supervising and optimizing antibiotic use
• Training physicians and pharmacists on national antibiotic treatment guidelines
• Technology and innovation used in infection control, prevention, and reduction

9. Leadership in Patient Safety

Purpose: This track aims to honor outstanding leaders in the health sectors or institutions who have shown exceptional commitment and clear vision in supporting, innovating, and empowering healthcare practitioners and patients to advance the concept of patient safety. The track focuses on leaders who embrace safety as a core value, create an environment that encourages innovation, and ensure the involvement of all stakeholders in achieving the highest standards of safe care.

Description: Effective leadership is a cornerstone of building a safe and trustworthy healthcare system. This track is designed to celebrate leaders who go beyond traditional roles to be catalysts for positive change in patient safety. This includes leaders who set clear strategies, provide necessary resources, support initiatives that empower healthcare practitioners to apply best practices, and engage patients as key partners in their safety journey. Their commitment goes beyond compliance with standards to introduce a culture of accountability and continuous learning from errors, leading to concrete and sustainable improvements in patient safety outcomes.

Target Group: Senior executives responsible for decision-making, including hospital or facility directors, sector managers, medical directors, executive directors, or chief executives.

Topics:

• Leadership initiatives to introduce a strong organizational culture focused on patient safety, inside or outside the organization.
• Supporting healthcare practitioners by encouraging the use of best patient safety practices.
• Specialized programs to support healthcare professionals scientifically and psychologically after patient safety events, enabling learning without fear of blame.
• Leading initiatives that strengthen patient and family engagement.
• Adoption of innovative solutions and advanced technologies by leadership to reduce patient safety events.
• Demonstrating effective leadership in managing patient safety crises.

10. Emotional Safety

Purpose: This track aims to recognize innovative programs, systems, and practices that strengthen Emotional Safety as a core dimension of patient safety. Emotional Safety refers to an intentional, interdisciplinary practice that promotes trust, resilience, healing, and protection from emotional harm during healthcare experiences. Projects under this track should demonstrate measurable progress in reducing fear, distress, trauma, or psychological harm, particularly for children, adolescents, and other vulnerable populations, and advancing a culture that values both physical and emotional safety equally.

Description: Emotional Safety is foundational to safe, high-quality care. Evidence shows that fear, unmanaged anxiety, poor communication, and traumatic healthcare experiences can cause long-term psychological and behavioral consequences, reduce adherence to treatment, and negatively affect trust and future healthcare engagement. Projects may range from frontline clinical interventions to institutional-level policy or culture change initiatives. Submissions should reflect clear methodology, innovation, measurable outcomes, and potential for replication.

Topics:

• Identifying psychosocial risks, strengths, coping needs, trauma history, and distress levels.
• Delivering emotionally safe, developmentally appropriate, and trauma-informed care.
• Creating physical and organizational environments that support emotional well-being.
• Building workforce capability and sustaining an emotional safety culture.