One in nine Canadians get infections in hospital

"We congratulate Canada on doing this," said Donaldson, who is also the chief medical officer for England and the United Kingdom's chief medical adviser.

"We now have half of the world's population covered with such pledges and as a result I think patients can look forward to Canada being very, very determined to make reductions in health-care infections," he said in an interview.

Instead of soap and water, alcohol rubs are becoming more commonplace among health-care workers who don't need to find a sink to clean their hands, Donaldson noted.

During his address to the conference attended by doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health-care professionals from around the globe, Donaldson also talked about medical mistakes that cost patients their lives.

He said rather than blaming individuals, the focus has shifted to analyzing how an entire hospital system, for example, leads to such errors and what can be done to prevent them.

But the pendulum has swing so far in that direction that it's now time to emphasize the importance of training, assessing and improving skills for health-care staff, Donaldson said.

Unlike pilots, for example, whose knowledge is regularly assessed, doctors aren't required to undergo any such rigours to ensure safe practices, he said.

"It can't be right that there's no formal assessment of a doctor's competence."

It's not enough for patients to put their trust in a doctor whose education isn't often supplemented beyond continuing professional development and reading journals, Donaldson said.

"That trust has to be underpinned by something more objective and which is tied into the doctor's continuing licence to practise rather than simply an educational activity with no end point."

Margaret Murphy, of Cork, Ireland, will be speaking at the conference Saturday about the many medical failures that led to her son's death in October 1999.

Kevin Murphy died at 21 after results from a blood test were stuck to the back of his family doctor's referral letter and not discovered until six weeks after Murphy passed away in hospital from a heart attack.

The three-day symposium is running in conjunction with Canadian Patient Safety Week, whose theme is "It's in your hands. Clean them well. Clean them often."

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