Making safety visible Determining barriers, enablers and implementation requirements for organisational surveillance of safety

This project aims to determine how boards and governing bodies can measure the safety of the care their organisations provide, how they can develop a more effective safety surveillance system, and to identify what support and training they need.

The project teams will work with boards to develop an improved understanding of measuring and monitoring patient safety in foundation trust boards and clinical commissioning group governing bodies.

The approach will be based on the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s Breakthrough Collaborative approach, but will also use other methods of paired and collaborative learning.

The ‘measuring and monitoring of safety’ framework will be the core content from which the team will build a practical system. Boards will have the opportunity to take part in:

• learning sessions – and opportunities for shared learning
• tailored capability-building sessions – based on individual boards’ needs
• site visits – with the opportunity for peer review and practical learning.

Learning will focus also on wider issues, such as how to incorporate patient stories effectively and how to develop safety ambitions. A key aim will be to determine how far boards can learn from one another to apply best-practice guidance and to change practice.

Benefits

• improved capability and understanding of measuring and monitoring safety for the boards
• improved measuring and monitoring of safety in the organisations taking part.

Who’s involved?

The project is being led by Haelo – an innovation and improvement centre that hosts improvement experts, clinicians, improvement fellows and researchers – working alongside the Greater Manchester Primary Care Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (GM PSTRC) at University of Manchester, and the Department of Psychology at University of Oxford. They are partnered by Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, Salford Clinical Commissioning Group and Salford City Council. The project is based at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.