Patient safety Patient safety is the avoidance of unintended or unexpected harm to people during the provision of health care

More than one million people use the NHS each day, and making sure they receive safe and reliable care is essential.

Our recent work and content on this topic is listed below.

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OASI Care Bundle: A multi-centre quality improvement project to reduce the incidence of obstetric anal sphincter injury

Improvement project

This project aimed to reduce rates of obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASI) following childbirth through use of an evidence-based care bundle, supported by an awareness campaign and multidisciplinary...

Blog

19 December 2013

2013 has seen a continued recognition of the critical role that human factors plays in safety science. But although aligned with the ‘safety agenda’, human factors offers so much more to an organisati...

Newsletter feature

18 December 2013

The transparent reporting of ward-by-ward staffing levels has been highlighted as a key action in the government’s response to the Francis Inquiry. Here we look at a tool being developed by Imperial C...

Blog

18 December 2013

2013 will go down as a year when the NHS did a lot of soul searching. In February, Sir Robert Francis QC published his report following the Mid Staffordshire Public Inquiry. The Inquiry uncovered a...

Minimum nurse staffing levels are only part of the picture

Blog

18 December 2013

Perhaps one of the mostly hotly debated issues before and since the publication of the Francis Inquiry report has been the question of whether there should be nationally set minimum nurse staffing lev...

Hard truths: essential actions

Briefing

December 2013

The focus of this briefing is on bridging the gap between the actions set out by the government in Hard Truths and their practical application by people working in the service.

Webinar: The measurement and monitoring of safety

Event

18 December 2013

Professor Charles Vincent talks through a framework for measuring and monitoring safety and answers questions from participants.

Blog

16 December 2013

The phone call was in hushed tones. ‘It’s chaos at NHS England’ they said. I wasn’t sure what was meant, but I had a good idea. ‘They’re reconstructing the NPSA systems because people have suddenly re...

Blog

11 December 2013

Last week I met James Titcombe, National Advisor on Patient Safety and Culture at the Care Quality Commission (CQC). James is perhaps better known as the father of Joshua, who died at University Hospi...

Blog

20 November 2013

Like most parents, I want my children to become good, honest, responsible adults. But which parenting techniques will turn my hope into reality? How do I get my daughters (currently aged two and four)...

Blog

19 November 2013

Today, the government published Hard Truths, its response to the recommendations of Sir Robert Francis, following his inquiry into the failures of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. It’s ...

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Patient safety Patient safety is the avoidance of unintended or unexpected harm to people during the provision of health care

OASI Care Bundle: A multi-centre quality improvement project to reduce the incidence of obstetric anal sphincter injury

Human factors: the way forward in healthcare and the personal price of failure on a 12 year old

Developing an early warning system for hospital staffing levels

Constant learning, continuous improvement - lessons from Francis

Minimum nurse staffing levels are only part of the picture

Hard truths: essential actions

Webinar: The measurement and monitoring of safety

Will patient leadership cure chaos at NHS England?

Investigating patient deaths: a waste of time and money?

The role of rules and regulation in patient safety

Measurement and data: the Hard Truth

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