Continuing action for imperatives in care

 Patient safety has been high on the political and health agenda since the original and sentinel report ‘To err is human’ published by the Institute of Medicine in the USA 20 years ago.1 

The healthcare world was shocked by the fact that we cause harm to one in 10 of our patients. We have moved a long way since that time, and the science of patient safety has emerged as a serious and fascinating academic study of human behaviour in a high risk industry. In addition, the topic and consequent changes made to make our health systems safer has engaged all the developed healthcare nations, and the World Health Organization is leading patient safety challenges across the planet. 

NHS Improvement recently published the strategy for the next few years for England. The three strategic aims are to continuously improve patient safety by building on two existing foundations, which are the patient safety culture and a patient safety system. It will be done by using three elements, that of insight, involvement and improvement.