PATIENT SAFETY MANAGEMENT IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE: ANALYSIS OF PRACTICES AND PROTOCOLS

Abstract

Patient safety management in Primary Health Care (PHC) represents a pillar for quality of care, and this study is justified by the need to understand the dissociation between formal protocols and their practical application. The main objective is to analyze the practices and protocols that shape patient safety management at this level of care. To this end, a qualitative and descriptive methodological approach is employed, based on a systematic bibliographic review. The main results reveal that systemic barriers, such as work overload, communication failures, and inadequate infrastructure, compromise adherence to existing protocols. It is found that safety is sustained more by the resilience and informal collaboration of the teams than by robust institutional support. It is concluded that the consolidation of a safety culture in PHC depends on a transformation that integrates participatory management and the continuous improvement of processes, overcoming the dependence on individual efforts.