New safety standards for invasive procedures

The Centre for Perioperative Care has recently published a second iteration of the 2015 National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures (NatSSiPs). The standards have been designed collaboratively across different professions, and with all four home nations and other patient safety organisations. They are a good read and should be read, absorbed and implemented by all practitioners working with invasive procedures – whether in areas of acute care or in primary care. The Centre for Perioperative Care (CPOC) has brought together the working group formed of patients and practising clinicians and published the resource, which they hope will be shared with patients, healthcare leaders, providers and all relevant bodies. 

The standards (dubbed NatSSiPs 2) are intended to enable safe, reliable and efficient care to every patient having an invasive procedure.¹ They state most emphatically that they are designed to make every patient safe rather than a tick box exercise to help prevent never events. They are meant to share the learning and best practice to support multidisciplinary teams and organisations to deliver safer care. 

The standards consist of two different but inter-related standards which are organisational standards and sequential standards. The former, declare the expectations of what Trusts and external bodies should do to support teams to deliver safe invasive care and are what this article will focus on primarily. The sequential standards are procedural steps that should be taken where appropriate by individuals and teams, for every patient undergoing an invasive procedure.