Comment

• Prioritising patient safety

Our scheme

• Safer Patients Initiative

Briefing

• Safe from harm

Consultation response

• Developing the annual health check in 2007/2008

News

• Help shape the English Patient Safety Campaign

Prioritising patient safety

Gill Hastings, Assistant Director, The Health Foundation

Patient safety is a major problem worldwide and no less of a serious issue in the UK. Patients and the public now have to question previous assumptions about safety in healthcare. Healthcare staff are increasingly recognising the need to change and to address the issue of patient safety.

Safer Patients Initiative

In 2004 The Health Foundation set up the Safer Patients Initiative (SPI). We’re working with 24 hospitals across the UK to help them change the way they work to improve safety, measure the results and embed improvements. The initiative has shown that a large number of changes can be sustained and spread across a hospital. The scheme’s flexibility is key to its success – it’s designed to respond to local needs, with the hospitals choosing the areas where they want to see improvements first.

Impressive safety improvements have been made by the first four hospitals that joined the scheme in 2004. After just two years, they had on average halved their number of medical mistakes. A further 20 hospitals joined the scheme in 2006. They’re working in pairs to provide mutual support, building on and learning from the impressive progress being made by the first four hospitals.

Safer Clinical Systems

One key finding from the SPI hospitals was that processes and systems of care were often not applied reliably. By switching to a systems approach, healthcare staff can begin to recognise which parts of the care process were being neglected and hence exposing patients to a risk of harm.

Building on this learning, in October The Health Foundation is starting a new five-year programme focused on building safer clinical systems. This will test and demonstrate ways to build better processes that improve patient safety.

In the first two-year phase a team of experts will work with expert practitioners from three to five pre-selected UK healthcare organisations to co-design and test a range of clinical systems interventions. The second phase will run until 2012, with up to 16 new UK healthcare organisations putting the successes from phase 1 into practice. The final phase will aim to speed up the spread of these systems approaches across the UK.

Foundations of the UK patient safety campaigns

SPI’s success has helped to create a strong interest in patient safety from healthcare staff and policy makers across the UK. The emerging findings have also gone on to form the foundations of the four UK patient safety campaigns launching this year with the aims of reducing harm and saving lives in the NHS.

We believe it’s vital that the campaigns come from within the service rather than being dictated from above. Clinicians must be empowered themselves to make changes to develop safer hospitals.

Patient Safety First

A national campaign for England is being developed and led by a team of NHS clinicians and managers. Leading the campaign is Stephen Ramsden, Chief Executive of the lead site in England for the first phase of the SPI. Stephen’s staff have achieved tremendous improvements for patients and he’s excited by the prospect of all NHS organisations getting involved in keeping patients safe.

Wales 1,000 lives campaign

The Welsh campaign launched in April with the aim of saving 1,000 patients’ lives and preventing 50,000 people from being injured during treatment. The two-year campaign involves all NHS trusts and local health boards. Co-directing the campaign are Dr Alan Wilson and Dr Jonathan Gray. Jonathan spent a year as a Health Foundation Quality Improvement Fellow working with the US Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Scottish Patient Safety Alliance

The Alliance brings together the NHS, the Scottish Government, professional bodies and patient representatives in a new drive to significantly reduce adverse events and improve patient safety. In the Alliance’s first programme of work, acute hospitals across the country are aiming to steadily improve the safety of hospital care.

Northern Ireland’s Patient Safety Forum

The Patient Safety Forum has been set up to support health and social care organisations to implement measures that save lives and reduce harm to patients. Each trust and board in Northern Ireland has selected three patient safety actions for specific attention over the next year and will measure its impact on the quality and safety of patient treatment.

Our scheme

Safer Patients Initiative

These pages explain the two phases of the initiative, list the hospitals taking part, and link to other parts of our site that focus on patient safety.

Briefing

Safe from harm

Illustrated with case studies, this briefing explains the Safer Patient’s Initiative and the emerging lessons from our work.

Consultation response

Developing the annual health check in 2007/2008

We’ve also used learning from the SPI to advise on how the Healthcare Commission could best measure whether acute trusts are complying with the Hygiene Code.

News

Help shape the English Patient Safety Campaign

We are supporting the campaign, being developed and led by a team of NHS clinicians and managers, which will launch this summer.