Wessex Academic Health Science Network pledges to improve patient safety

Wessex Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) pledges support of the national campaign, Sign up to Safety.

Sign up to Safety is a national campaign in England to help build a safer NHS and address the problem of unsafe care and avoidable harm.

Since launch, more than 250 organisations have pledged commitment to improve the safety of healthcare through the publication of organisationally focused Safety Improvement Plans (SIP’s). SIP’s outline the actions that will be taken, Board to Frontline to deliver on five discrete pledges.

• Putting safety first. Commit to reduce avoidable harm in the NHS by half and make public our locally developed goals and plans which reflect the local priorities as set out by our members and stakeholders.
• Continually learning. Make our organisation more resilient to risks, by acting on the feedback from patients and staff and by constantly measuring and monitoring how safe our services are by integrating patient feedback into all of our work where it impacts upon the patient. We will also ensure staff feedback is taken into account when the AHSN is supporting / evaluating any changes to service.
• Being honest. Be transparent with people about our progress to tackle patient safety issues and support staff to be candid with patients and their families if something goes wrong by spreading good practice and supporting organisations to improve their services.
• Collaborating. takes a lead role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that improvements are made across all of the local services that patients use. Wessex AHSN will implement a Patient Safety Collaborative (PSC) that will support organisations to improve patient safety, learn from good and bad practice and promote a culture of safety.
• Being supportive. Help our people understand why things go wrong and how to put them right. Give them the time and support to improve and celebrate progress. We will work with our members and stakeholders to build capability around quality improvement, practice that affects patient safety and facilitate learning events to share lessons across the Wessex footprint.

Wessex AHSN is host to the Patient Safety Collaborative for Wessex and recognises that the ambitions of Sign up to Safety align with our work. We wish to make available for patients, staff and carers our pledges and commitment at https://healthinnovationwessex.org.uk/our-services/sign-up-to-safety/. Our effort will be focused on supporting our member organisations to deliver focused improvements in specific clinical/subject specific areas where we know tangible improvement can be made – Our immediate priorities are focused on improving quality of patients experience and reducing avoidable harm in relation to Sepsis and Transfers of Care.

Tracy Broom, Associate Director of Wessex AHSN’s Patient Safety Collaborative, said: “By Signing up to Safety, we are joining other organisations across Wessex who are pledging to place the safety of patient’s at the heart of care design and delivery. Our role will be to facilitate sharing and learning in focused areas where avoidable harm can be reduced for patients.”

Professor Jane Reid – Clinical Lead for the Wessex Patient Safety Collaborative and Regional Lead (South) for the Sign up to Safety Campaign commented “ we have a great opportunity to align our national and regional effort, pool resources and learn from one another. We all recognise that the NHS is facing unprecedented financial pressures – none of us needs to reinvent the wheel – but we do need to learn how to ride a bike! We can make greater strides and deliver greater impact for safety improvement, where we commit, connect and collaborate.”

Suzette Woodward, Sign up to Safety Campaign Director, said: “Our ambition is for the whole NHS in England to become the safest healthcare system in the world and Wessex AHSN is playing a critical part in helping to achieve this.

“We are committed to supporting the NHS to place patient safety first. Patient safety is the organising principle of high quality healthcare; only safe healthcare services are truly efficient, effective and able to offer the best experience to patients and carers. We will allow people to work on the things that matter to them and keep local solutions localised but enable shared learning nationally for others to adapt.”

For further information, please contact:

Tracy Broom, Associate Director Patient Safety Collaborative, Wessex AHSN

Tracy.broom@wessexahsn.net Tel: 023 8202 0840