Harnessing the potential of patients to reduce harm using safety briefings

It is well documented that up to 10% of patients are harmed whilst receiving health care and 50% of this harm is avoidable. Significant investment has been made to increase awareness of harm with health care professionals, yet harm reduction remains negligible. Comparatively little has been done to harness the potential of patients to identify and manage their own risk.

Safety briefings – delivered to the person at risk, with the purpose of providing knowledge and demonstrating safe behaviours – are commonplace in high-risk industries and sports, such as airline travel and scuba diving. However, these safety briefings remain unknown in health care.

This project, led by Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and Haelo, will use this innovative approach to benefit patients, improve quality of care and foster a safe environment. It will look to increase awareness of key actions and behaviours which patients can adopt when they are in hospital to prevent common safety incidents.

The study will be conducted on a subset of inpatients receiving elective care at Salford Royal and will involve the pre-operative assessment clinic, the surgical admissions unit and a subset of five surgical wards (general surgery and orthopaedics).

The project will assess whether an innovative short safety briefing can reduce avoidable harm in patients coming into hospital for elective surgery. The outcomes and anticipated patient benefits will be assessed via a combination of post-intervention questionnaires and NHS Safety Thermometer data. It is anticipated that, if the behaviours in the safety briefing are adopted, there will be demonstrable reductions in harm.

Contact details

For further information about the project, please email Professor Maxine Power, Director of Innovation and Improvement Science, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.