There is a deficit in activity related to patient safety in primary care and the primary care/secondary care interface in Europe. This deficit relates to research, to sharing of information, to learning and to collaboration.This co-ordination action will specifically address issues addressed in the call through: (1)The development of a taxonomy of adverse events and errors. (2) Identifying best clinical practice and the way that it improves patient safety through an understanding of decision making and medication errors in primary care. (3) Achieve consensus on the measurement of safety culture and leadership in the primary care context and develop agreement on indicators which can be used to assess patient safety and improvements in safety culture. (4) Enhancing existing knowledge from quality improvement techniques which are widely used in the primary care setting and applying these to learning cycles for improvements in patient safety. (5) Develop a reporting system which can be used for identifying errors in primary care in countries where activities related to patient safety in primary care are in a nascent state and develop an accreditation framework for patient safety in these nascent organisations. (6) Identifying methods to involve patients in patient safety initiatives in primary care. (7) Identifying communication-related threats at the primary-secondary care interface and developing intervention strategies to overcome these.Building up an existing network of researchers into a pan European network, this co-ordination action will extend the current knowledge and experience from countries where the importance of patient safety is nationally recognised to countries where it is less developed, ensure that there is an appropriate focus on primary care and encourage co-operation and collaboration for future interventions through large scale trials. We aim to substantially increase the level of activity in relation to sharing information through workshops and seminars.