**1. Introduction**

Patient safety is an important global issue. It serves as the basis of safe and optimal medical care worldwide [1, 2]. World Health Organization (WHO) defines patient safety as "A framework of organized activities that creates cultures, processes, procedures, behaviors, technologies and environments in health care that consistently and sustainably lower risks, reduce the occurrence of avoidable harm, make errors less likely and reduce the impact of harm when it does occur" [2, 3].

Patient safety forms the foundation of the best practice in providing high-quality medical service. Failure to implement patient safety measures will generate serious consequences such as decreased patient's quality of life, increased morbidity and mortality, increased negative image, and public distrust of healthcare providers. Those situations that may cause or already caused unnecessary harm to the patient are described as incidents [4]. According to WHO, patient safety incidents are classified into three groups: near miss, harmful incidents, and no-harm incidents. Harmful incidents are further divided into two types: adverse events and adverse reactions [3].

The importance of healthcare worker (HW) safety has been increasingly recognized as well, especially after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Healthcare worker safety is closely interconnected to patient safety [5]. Improving the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and reporting-analyzing serious safety-related incidents are the most relevant aspects of gastrointestinal endoscopy (GIE) [6].

Gastrointestinal endoscopy (GIE) is one of the fastest-growing procedures, and patient safety undeniably forms the foundation of delivering high-quality GIE. However, patient safety issues are still reported. Correa, et al. [4] stated that there were 111 incidents out of 42,863 (0.25%) GIE procedures in Brazil's tertiary hospitals. The percentage of near misses, no-harm incidents, and adverse event cases were 34.2%, 40.5%, and 23.4%, respectively. Incorrect patient identification was the most prevalent incident [4].

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, GIE practices declined as endoscopists were concerned about SARS-CoV-2 infection. Zein et al. [7] reported that 56.5% of Indonesian GI endoscopists temporarily stopped their endoscopy practice. Han et al. [8] showed that in South Korea, endoscopists decided to perform a limited number of GIE. Endoscopic procedures should be performed with safety precautions for patients and also healthcare workers [9]. Rashid emphasized that the endoscopy unit should be reorganized to facilitate procedures as safely as possible along with general measures and COVID-19 screening [10].
