Patient safety in anesthesia.

Some may consider anesthesia a risky endeavor. However, anesthesia is safer now than ever before, and compared to other disciplines, anesthesiology is still among the leading disciplines with regard to patient safety. The presence of a knowledgeable, competent, careful, and vigilant anesthesia provider is the most important element in delivering safe anesthesia. Therefore, strong efforts have to be made to further improve our skills and to better understand the complex systems in which we work. Given the facts that errors and adverse events associated with patient harm and deaths continue to occur and that the complexity of our health care system will steadily increase, it is clear that more needs to be done in order to make anesthesia safer. With its proposals for training on patient safety, the European Society of Anesthesiology (ESA) makes an important contribution thereto, which merits expeditious and efficient implementation both in academia and everyday practice.