**6. Key directions for the future of patient safety in physiotherapy**

Education and training are keys to fostering a culture of safety in physiotherapy [9, 44]. Proper training will ensure correct assessment and inform decisions on when a given treatment is warranted or not. Unfamiliarity with a technique or its potential outcomes could result in injury and should constitute a reason for withholding treatment. Patient safety needs to be incorporated into standard physiotherapy education and training programs, as university graduates receive little or no training in this area. As stated by Boohoo et al. [66] "Many professionals that are performing teaching functions in the health area carry with themselves rich practice baggage from the work environment, with technical knowledge coming from Master and Ph.D. courses,


**Table 3.**

*Actions following observation of incidents or adverse effects (AE)s in physiotherapy.*

*Patient Safety in Physiotherapy: Are Errors that Cause or Could Cause Harm Preventable? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107847*

and participation in congresses and scientific events. But this does not mean that they are trained for a systematic approach to error sources and events that may happen in the health care system or that they are concerned with the reporting of events to promote quality improvement processes in the environment where they perform their activities…."

Clinical simulation training is a widely accepted teaching methodology in the health sciences and is recognized by the WHO as a basic and necessary tool. The simulation of real-life clinical scenarios allows participants to practice aspects of their profession, engage in joint discussions and reflections, and transfer lessons learned to the real world. It is based on experiential learning and has been linked to favorable PS outcomes and effective team communication [5, 67].

Systems and strategies for reporting incidents and near-miss events, which account for most errors detected in physiotherapy, are also crucial if progress is to continue. The future of PS in physiotherapy also depends on our ability to transfer awareness and knowledge beyond the hospital setting. Appropriate and inappropriate actions in the event of an incident or near-miss event are summarized in **Table 3**.
