KEEPING STAFF & PATIENTS SAFE XXXX


Making safety everyone’s business


Steve Fairman, managing director at NHS Improving Quality, talks about the launch of 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives and what he hopes these will achieve. Dr Liz Mear, chief executive at the North West Coast AHSN, also discusses what role her organisation will play in delivering continual patient safety learning. David Stevenson reports.


safety learning sits at the heart of healthcare in England.


A


Each of the 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) is leading a Patient Safety Collaborative to tackle the leading causes of avoidable harm to patients, as part of a scheme coordinated by NHS Improving Quality (IQ) and NHS England.


Steve Fairman, managing director of NHS IQ, told NHE: “This is the first time the NHS has had a strategic, locally-grounded approach to safety.


“This single approach, led at a local level by the AHSNs – with input and learning from universities, industrial partners and councils, the third sector and the health service – will be massively important.”


The programme was borne out of Professor Don Berwick’s 2013 report ‘A Promise to Learn – a commitment to act: improving the safety of patients in England’.


new national programme has been launched to ensure continual patient


Fairman added that the initiative is about building capability and a safety culture within every NHS organisation.


He gave us an example based on something he’d seen recently at the Yorkshire & Humber AHSN. “They are looking at reducing the number of falls in local hospitals, and have got a small team working with staff in individual wards in individual hospitals. They have meetings every morning called ‘safety clusters’ to talk about what fall or near-fall incidents have occurred, and what they can do to prevent them.


The 15 AHSNs


East Midlands Eastern Greater Manchester


North East and North Cumbria North West Coast


Imperial College Health Partners Oxford


South London South West Peninsula Kent, Surrey and Sussex UCL Partners Wessex West Midlands West of England Yorkshire and Humber


Prof Berwick’s study called for the NHS “to become, more than ever before, a system devoted to continual learning and improvement of patient care, top to bottom and end to end”.


76 | national health executive Nov/Dec 14


“A constant learning experience is building. That is the beauty of these locally- driven initiatives: they can get out into individual hospitals and wards and build the capability of the front-line, patient-facing staff.”


All the AHSNs are putting a major


emphasis on


developing high-quality leadership in improving safety. Prof Berwick’s report found that the current culture doesn’t always encourage staff to come forward when they feel their


area of work is unsafe, or potentially unsafe, noted Fairman. He added: “Leadership is about giving people permission and space to do this and about setting an example of what safe care and leadership looks like.”


Setting priorities


Each Collaborative sets its own priority safety areas, such as reducing pressure ulcers, falls or medical device errors, to ensure they have the biggest impact in meeting local need.


They will also help support individuals, teams and organisations to build skills and knowledge about safety improvement and provide opportunities to continually learn from each other.


Dr Liz Mear, chief executive of the North West Coast AHSN, told us that because the science networks already have partners in health, technology, business and universities for trialling and research, the latest approach brings a wider scope to the table than what has gone before.


“We already have the partnerships set up, so we’re not performance management organisations – we’re supportive partners helping to put things into practice.


“Obviously you’re influencing through the networks you’ve built up and the good relationships and putting people together who could have complimentary partnerships.


“It is unique because it isn’t forced on you: the AHSNs have the ‘menu of choice’ to choose from with regards to areas of focus. Obviously there has to be robust measurement strategies around these to show that you are delivering change, but you’re not constrained by feeling hemmed in and forced to take one line of action.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100