Patients live with their conditions every day, safe care should value what they experience.
World Patient Safety Day is held on 17 September each year. In 2026, the global theme is “Safe care for noncommunicable diseases”, with the slogan “Safe care for life!”
Noncommunicable diseases are long-term conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease.
While healthcare consumers may see healthcare professionals for appointments, tests or treatment, it is the consumer who lives with their condition 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That experience gives patients and families intimate knowledge that healthcare services need to listen to.
Patients bring essential knowledge to safe care
People living with long-term conditions often become experts in their own condition and experience. It’s not surprising, they know what is normal for them, they know how their condition affects their daily life, they know what treatments they have tried, what has worked, and what has not.
They may also notice subtle changes before those changes are visible during an appointment.
Families and carers can hold important knowledge too. They may help someone manage care, notice changes, communicate their needs or understand information.
This knowledge does not replace clinical expertise, it adds dimension to it.
Health professionals bring clinical knowledge and experience. Patients and families bring lived knowledge developed through managing a condition every day. Safe care needs both.
Partnership makes care safer
The World Health Organisation says people living with noncommunicable diseases must be partners in safe care. This means involving people meaningfully in decisions, learning from lived experience and providing information they can understand.
Partnership with healthcare professionals and services should look like:
- Listening and curiosity when a person says something has changed.
- Respect that people know about their own bodies and conditions.
- Explain diagnoses, medicines, risks and treatment options simply and clearly.
- Inclusion of support people to ask questions and participate in decisions.
- Inclusion families and carers when the patient wants them involved.
- Action on concerns rather than dismissal.
- Involve people with lived experience in designing and reviewing services.
Partnership means recognising that patients and families hold information that can help those systems work safely.
Part of a global patient movement
World Patient Safety Day connects patients, families, health professionals, healthcare organisations and patient groups around the world.
This year’s theme reflects something patient, carer and health consumer organisations have long understood: safe care cannot be effectively designed without the people who receive it as partners in the design process.
HCCWA stands alongside patients and patient organisations globally in calling for healthcare that recognises lived experience, supports shared decisions, and treats patients and families as partners.
Safe care for life should apply wherever someone lives, whatever services they use and however long they need care. It should include people who face barriers like cost, distance, disability, language, culture, discrimination or difficulty navigating the healthcare system.
Your right to be involved
The Australian Charter of Healthcare Rights includes the rights to partnership, information, access, safety, respect, privacy and giving feedback.
Partnership means being included in decisions about your health care to the extent that you choose. It also means having your questions, experiences and concerns taken seriously.
If you are struggling to understand your options, raise a concern or resolve a healthcare problem in Western Australia, Health Consumers’ Council WA may be able to help.
Our Individual Health Advocacy Service is free, confidential and independent.
This World Patient Safety Day, our message is clear.
Patients and families are not passive recipients of care, we hold knowledge that matters.
Safe care means listening to that knowledge.
Safe care means valuing lived experience.
Safe care means patients and families are considered partners in care.
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