Enormous emphasis has been placed on patient safety in the NHS in recent years and good progress has been made, for example, through the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, which at its core seeks to improve the way in which the NHS learns, involves patients, and promotes psychological safety to enable staff to speak up when things go wrong.
My role was established to promote patient safety and to promote the value of listening to patients in relation to medicines and medical devices. But despite the progress that has been made, patients still tell me that their voices are going unheard and that decisions about healthcare design and patient care are being made without reference to their views. Healthcare leaders tell me that they want to focus on safety but decisions higher up the chain prevent them from doing so. There is a real and present danger that a focus on competing priorities, such as productivity and finance, mean that patient safety is seen as implicit and is not prioritised in decisions.
When I took up post as Patient Safety Commissioner in September 2022, I found that some patient safety organisations had developed their own principles relevant to their own activities. Health is a complex, adaptive system which is currently siloed and disjointed. By working to a shared set of principles to guide our decisions, we have the opportunity to do things differently, and better.
Therefore, I have developed draft Principles of Better Patient Safety and am now launching a public consultation to hear the views from the whole healthcare system.
Once finalised, the Principles of Better Patient Safety will act as a guide for senior healthcare leaders in how to design and deliver safer care for patients and reduce avoidable harm. These are relevant for healthcare providers as well as officials, commissioners, regulators, manufacturers, and the broader supply chain.
They provide a shared framework for decision-making, planning and working collaboratively with patients as partners. With these principles in place, leaders will be able to focus on safety when we become distracted by competing priorities.
Working in partnership is key to developing the solutions to keeping patients safe. This public consultation is the opportunity for us to hear from you, whether you are a citizen, a patient, a carer, a healthcare worker, a senior leader, or if you work in the many organisations that provide services, medicines, and medical devices to the NHS.
Please let us know your thoughts about the draft principles, what works, what could be better, what is missing?
Your contribution and your voice matters – and we are listening.
You can respond to the consultation at: https://consultations.dhsc.gov.uk/668fe001fbdb541607033847