Nursing a safer future: How nurses are using proactive approaches to manage patient safety
July 2013
Key points
- The NHS Safety Thermometer – how nurses can measure data to influence harm-free care for patients.
- Concierge service for ward sisters – how ward sisters have freed up time for patient care by delegating administrative tasks.
- Reducing insulin errors – how a chart and poster have helped staff to reduce medication errors.
- Safer Clinical Systems – how a pilot scheme to influence the quality of handovers is improving the resulting care.
This special supplement, published in association with Nursing Times, explores how nurses are using proactive approaches to manage patient safety.
To date, improvement activity has mainly focused on a handful of harms and relied on reactive approaches to safety management following harm to patients. The Health Foundation believes that we must build on this activity and move towards a more proactive approach to safety management, tackling the more complex hidden harms and protecting patients.
Nurses are well placed to make care safer and are doing impressive work to improve the safety of their patients.
The supplement showcases nurse-led initiatives that demonstrate effective and proactive safety management. We hope that the stories in the supplement will trigger discussion and debate and inspire new ways of thinking about how to make care safer for your patients.
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