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Patient Safety

The safety of patients is a key priority for all NHS organisations whether they are delivering care or monitoring the effectiveness of that care. Working together to improve patient safety is priority for NHS West Midlands, our hospital trusts and the community. To work with us to provide a patient perspective on safety issues, we have appointed two Patient Safety Champions who are volunteers and members of the general public and live and work in the West Midlands area.

At NHS West Midlands, safety is seen as an integral part of quality which also comprises effectiveness, equality and patient/carer experience. Patient safety has been developed in support of the Strategic Health Authority (SHA) goals of assessing and improving effectiveness and safety of clinical services, innovation, resulting in positive experience for all service users. The SHA’s Director of Nursing and Workforce has board level responsibility for patient safety and though the engagement of Trust Chief Executives, Medical and Nursing Directors , safety is promoted as the first priority, everyone’s business and a ‘must do’ for Primary Care Trusts and Hospital Trusts.

We must learn from national reports on patient safety incidents and reviews and share this learning across the West Midlands to ensure we work from best practice and minimize risk to our patients. To this end, we are currently developing our Patient Safety Priorities document for the West Midlands region. We are focusing on raising the profile of patient safety, developing more robust partnerships with our organisations and developing methods to ensure assurance that quality, safe care is delivered and risks are minimised. In addition we will include recommendations from the following reports for all organisations to review and ensure they are meeting the recommendation stated in:

Nationally

Health Select Committee Report on Patient Safety 2009
Colin Norris Inquiry 2010- Yorkshire and Humber
The NHS Early Warning Systems 2010 – Robert Francis QC
Mid staffs Review Recommendations x 3 (Robert Francis QC, Professor Alberti, Dr David Colin Thomé).
Operating Framework for NHS in England 2010/11
Ten for 2010 Programme – National Patient Safety Agency
Patient Safety First Campaign 2009
Quality Innovation Productivity Prevention and Commissioning Quality and Innovation programmes.

Regionally (2009/2010)

Developed information gathering processes to monitor Trust performance
Reviewed and developed safety related policies: Management of Serious Incidents, Guidance on Homicide and Patient Safety Champions Plan. These will be finalized and will be presented at the SHA Board in May 2010.
Participated in a patient safety audit undertaken by Price Waterhouse Cooper
Project managed the Venous Thromboembolism (prevention of blood clots) Project for Screening on admission of all medical/surgical patients
Supporting the Never Events Framework (incidents which should never happen)
Reviewing Medicines Management (eg.drug errors) and establishing the Medicines Management Programme Board.
Supported the National Patient Safety First Campaign which was introduced in 2009, and Trusts are encouraged to ‘sign up’ to local campaigns with the aim of preventing harm and improving safety. The national campaign calls for a focus on achieving:

limiting mortality from in-hospital cardiac arrests through earlier recognition and treatment of deteriorating patients
improving critical care through more reliable application of central line and ventilator care bundles
reducing preoperative harm through elective surgical site infection prevention and usage of the WHO's “Safe Surgery Checklist”
Reducing harm from high-risk medicines (e.g. anticoagulants, injectable sedatives, opiates and insulin).
NHS West Midlands has 100% sign up of all acute trusts and work is underway with PCTs and Mental Health Trusts.

Manjeet Garcha, Acting Head of Patient Safety Email 0121 695 2591