Safer Patients Network - Health Foundation

In brief

It is estimated that up to 10 per cent of people admitted to hospital experience some form of harm. In light of this, improving patient safety must be a priority for healthcare organisations. However, measures of performance on quality and safety indicate that the NHS is finding it difficult to embed reliable and sustainable improvements.

A social network approach to improving quality and safety in healthcare can increase the scale and pace of change in eliminating harm within and beyond individual organisations.

Our Safer Patients Network is a vibrant, self-sustaining, innovative group of organisations. They test, develop and explore ways of building improvement skills and making healthcare safer for patients.

Launched in June 2009, the network is currently made up of 18 sites. They were all involved in our Safer Patients Initiative, which was set up in 2004 to find practical ways of making acute hospitals safer for the people who use them. The network is taking forward the learning from, and sustaining the impact of, the Safer Patients Initiative.

Members of the network are supported by the Health Foundation and our partner in the programme, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. The evaluation of the network is being carried out by a consortium between Cardiff University and the York Health Economic Consortium (YHEC).

Current activities

The network members have access to expertise within and outside the network through regular webinars, discussion calls, extranet, email and through an annual two-day event.

The network members can also apply for small scale improvement programmes including:

An innovation programme

The ‘Pass it on’ capability building programme. Teams with expertise in a particular area are trained to support other organisations to get results.

The network is in the process of setting up a governance group made up of members of the network. The aim of the group is to provide leadership in the development of the network.

The members

Comments

John Kapp 15 February 2011

Dear Network
I congratulate you on setting this up, which is extremely important. As a patient representative in the NHS for the last 11 years, I find that the doctor's Hippoctratic oathm 'do no harm' is honoured more in the breach than the observance, not knowingly, but because the trust that the doctor naturally has in government regulatory bodies, and their reliance on the integrity of the drug companies, has been broken. Most publicly funded interventions are drug-based, and have side effects which are harmful. Many drugs have recently been shown to be no more effective than placebo (eg antidepressants)
For safer, more effective interventions, we have to commission meditation-based interventions, such as the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy 8 week course, which received the gold standard of evidence - NICE recommendation in 2004 (CG23). This is provided in the NHS, but just to tick the box 'complies with NICE guidelines, as the waiting time in Sussex is 2,000 years. I have foneded a company called SECTCo to provide this free on the NHS, see www.sectco.org, and am seeking a contract with the GP consortia.. This is safe, effective and gives good patient experience, and is cliically appropriate to most patients in primary care.

Frances Collins 02 April 2011

MBCT is an evidence- based model.The authors of MBCT, referred to above, have clearly advised that MBCT be taught by those with mental health training ONLY. Whilst there is no legitimate regulatory body, as yet, in UK for mindfulness- based interventions, vulnerable individuals are faced with the dilemma of needing to protect themselves against those who do not have appropriate training. The most dangerous of this group are those who present themselves as expert or accredited. Interestingly, they also charge the highest prices to participants.

For the record, as a senior NHS clinician qualified to teach mindfulness - based approaches, there are a growing number of appropriately trained individuals who do hold ethics highly offering MBCT within NHS.

There is no accreditation body for mindfulness -based approaches in U.K. Those organizations who offer accredited training have accredited themselves. To suggest that these models, already demonstarted to be robust and to hold the integrity of mindfulness teachings, need to be enhanced without proof, needs to be seen for what it is. The value and intention of self acclaimed authority or accreditation here is left to the reader's own interpretation.

Joy Whitlock 31 January 2012

It has been a great privilege for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board to be a mentor site in the Safer Patient Network Pass It On Collaborative. The team has recieved support from The Health Foundation and coaching and skills development from IHI. A huge thank you to the 6 organisations that worked with us as mentee sites and allowed us to put our new skills in to practice. In the spirit of all sharing and all learning we will contiue our quest to spread the SKIN Bundle and make pressure ulcers a thing of the past.

On behalf of the Cardiff and Vale UHB Team
Alison Evans, Joy Whitlock, Gemma Ellis, Sian Rowlands and our fantastic executive lead Mandy Rayani.

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