Inspiring improvement in patient safety

With the demise of the NPSA, the changes at the Department of Health and abolition of strategic health authorities, we are now one of the few organisations in England to be actively promoting patient safety.

In 2012 we will launch a network to provide a means for safety minded practitioners and leaders to connect, share and disseminate knowledge and practice in improving patient safety. The idea is to support the work of frontline staff wanting to improve patient safety from the beginning to sharing their learning with others and therefore to release the knowledge in to the health service.

We will continue to contribute to the knowledge and debate around patient safety by generating real-time insights from our Safer Clinical Systems LINK programme, which is now in its second phase.

Publications

We have several publications planned for the year, including:

• an improvement report on effective measurement
• a best evidence review of the use of safety cases
• the report from the Lining Up study on central venous catheter infection
• a series of thought papers on current issues in patient safety to coincide with the Patient Safety Congress.

We plan build new knowledge on patient safety through commissioning a best evidence review on the patient role in ensuring patient safety and an improvement report to explore the factors contributing to reducing hospital acquired infection. We will also commission primary research focused on the relationship between costs and patient safety.

Shine programme

A further round of our Shine programme will support innovative approaches in improving quality through patient safety.