Patient Safety - improvement

The Patient Safety Improvement Programmes are a key part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, to deliver safety and quality improvements across the NHS in England. They are managed and led by the National Patient Safety Team.

The Patient Safety Improvement Programmes aim to support and encourage a culture of safety, continuous learning and improvement across the health and care system, helping to reduce the risk of harm and make care safer for all.

The programmes are delivered by the National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes Team working with the Health Innovation Networks, our regional network being Health Innovation South West.

These Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) support Integrated Care Systems and local health providers to bring about practical improvements to patient safety. The programmes support leaders in patient safety across the NHS, in particular: Patient Safety Specialists, Patient Safety Partners, Medication Safety Officers, Digital Clinical Safety Officers, Medical Devices Safety Officers and Maternity Safety Champions.

The programmes support systems to test and spread effective safety interventions and strategies, learn from excellence and continuously improve, by implementing the following:

• Culture: promote positive safety culture, encouraging staff to gain insight and share learning from good and poor practice.
• Evidence-based improvement: support evidence-based, quality improvement (QI) methodology, ensuring change is consistently measured and evaluated.
• Quality improvement (QI) capability: grow QI capability in trusts and local healthcare systems so they can continue to improve.
• System-level change: enable regional and local health systems to identify improvement priorities and share learning.