1. Patient safety
NHS patients receive care from doctors, nurses and other health professionals who use their skills in a dedicated and conscientious way. But in the complex, high-technology environment of modern healthcare, things can and do go wrong. And when they do go wrong, the consequences can be devastating for families and staff. Our task is to reduce these risks and make healthcare safer.
Over the last few years, new policies have established a clear framework of accountability within the National Health Service (NHS) to improve healthcare quality as part of the government's modernisation agenda. The new policies were introduced after serious failures in standards of care in local NHS services were revealed during the 1990s. The media continued to fuel interest in the area of patient safety, reporting on victims of serious medical errors as well as research that showed that preventable errors were more common than previously realised.
In 2000, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) released a report, An organisation with a memory, which highlighted the scale of potentially avoidable adverse events that result in harm to patients and made recommendations to improve safety. The Government accepted these recommendations and in May 2001 published Building a safer NHS for patients, which outlined how improvements should be delivered.
The main lesson is that mistakes caused by the poor performance of individuals are uncommon: the best way to reduce errors is to tackle any underlying systemic or organisational causes, rather than automatically acting against staff involved.
These pages summarise the relevant findings, legislation and action taken to implement recommendations in the area of patient safety.
Patient safety
The identification, analysis and management of patient-related risks and incidents, to make patient care safer and minimise harm to patients.
Patient safety incident
Any unintended or unexpected incident(s) that could have or did lead to harm for one or more persons receiving NHS-funded healthcare.
Prevented patient safety incident ('near miss' or 'close call')
Any patient safety incident that had the potential to cause harm but was prevented, resulting in no harm to patients receiving NHS-funded healthcare.
