Patient safety

Our patient safety strategy has four driving principles, underpinned by openness and transparency, these are:

• A just culture of safety
• Continuous learning and improvement
• Patient and carer engagement
• Leadership and quality improvement

We strive to deliver a cultural change programme that brings together quality improvement, research, innovation, global health and patient safety specialists to become leaders in delivering safe patient care.

We will continue to promote the importance of designing safe systems that reduce harm and by providing patients and carers with knowledge of what to expect of the healthcare system.

We will continue to adopt a trust wide approach to quality improvement from ward to board, developing the capability of staff to develop skills, as important as clinical skills, to lead change, using the model for improvement methodology.

Our ambition

Our guiding ambition is to provide safe, patient-centred care to a consistently high standard.

To achieve this we will focus on six key areas of work:

• Consistency of care
• Early detection and treatment
• Right care, in the right place, at right time
• Infection prevention and control
• Areas of frequent harm
• Learning from death.

We will continue to embed the use of the SAFER flow bundle and reduce unwarranted variation, in addition to ensuring that patients receive appropriate and timely review by senior clinicians.

We will strengthen the recognition and escalation of patient deterioration by implementing NEWS2 and a new assessment for detection of acute delirium; early identification of sepsis remains a priority.

We will continue to reduce the incidence of healthcare associated infections and encourage antimicrobial stewardship. Work to reduce falls and pressure ulcers remains a priority area, as does reducing the harm caused by deconditioning.

We will refine our systems for reviewing mortality, to ensure this is consistently applied in all areas and we will learn from themes and trends so that patient safety improvements can be made.

In summary, we will

• Ensure that patient safety is a priority above all others
• Develop staff to improve the working processes and environment
• Foster pride over fear and take time to celebrate and thank
• Promote transparency, honesty and trust
• Engage and empower patients and carers