◗ PATIENT SAFETY
Safety Academy aims to save lives Improving the safety of patient care is a significant challenge for the NHS, and for health services around the world. In this country, we are fortunate in many ways with our healthcare system. It is affordable and accessible to all; it is staffed by skilled and dedicated professionals; and anybody who falls ill can reasonably expect a high standard of care. Healthcare relies on a range of complex interactions between people, skills, technologies and drugs. Sometimes things can – and do – go wrong, and patients can unintentionally become the victim of an error. In July 2012 Northampton General Hospital established a Patient Safety Academy, led by the medical director, five clinical leads and a project management team trained to support improvement techniques. The academy has an overall three-year aim of reducing harm by 50 per cent and saving an extra 300 lives. The team lead in five key areas of improvement: ◗ Reducing harm from failure to plan
Many more people are working throughout the whole organisation to help improve patient safety.
◗ Reducing harm from failure to rescue ◗ Reducing harm from failures of care ◗ Learning from and sharing lessons from failures and successes ◗ Learning from error and human factors – safety science The five work streams encompass a broad and challenging portfolio of projects. Many more people are working throughout the whole organisation to help improve patient safety, and much of the work they are doing impacts across all five of these work streams – for example staff in Information Technology, Pharmacy and Medication Safety.
Healthcare relies on a range of complex interactions between people, skills, technologies and drugs.
The majority of our projects focus on the day to day work our doctors and nurses are involved with on the ‘shop floor’. Members of the Patient Safety Academy at a recent meeting
8 ❘ INSIGHT