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National Patient Safety Agency

Every year the NHS has almost a million incidents which give cause for concern regarding patient safety. Apart from the misery and suffering that the more serious incidents cause to the patient victim there is the ever increasing cost to the NHS of negligence insurance cover for clinical negligence claims. Following investigation by the Chief Medical Officer relating to medical errors and patient safety in healthcare, the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) was founded in 2001. The NPSA is a Special Health Authority created to co-ordinate the efforts of all those involved in healthcare which encourages healthcare staff and doctors to report their mistakes and near mistakes made by themselves and others without fear of recrimination from their employer. This process would enable the NHS to identify and consider the most often repeated mistakes enabling it to introduce new policies or practices to ensure that any particular mistake could be avoided in future.

Improving Communication

The NPSA also provides NHS employees with a package of training updates and on the job tools to assist them in improving patient interaction. Communicating well with a patient and a patient’s family can often mean the difference between misunderstandings and clarity, which in turn can help to prevent unnecessary clinical negligence claims being undertaken by a patient and can help limit the concern and worry a family or patient may be going through. The NPSA has released a number of videos to help staff become well versed in communication with patients.

Being Open Policy

One specific policy that the NPSA has brokered is called the “Being Open” policy. This policy does as the name suggests – it encourages staff to be open with patients and apologise when a mistake is made along with providing a clear explanation of how the mistake happened. The policy also stipulates that NHS staff should tell the patient and the patient’s family exactly what it is they plan on doing to rectify the mistake and any possible problems that it may have caused. They should also make clear what has been done to prevent this kind of mistake happening again. There is however a perceived risk to the NHS that this policy may encourage clinical negligence claims.

Problem Solving

The NPSA has indicated that it will improve patient safety by utilising a number of measures including :-

• Information on incidents giving cause for concern regarding patient safety will be collected and collated from all staff and organisations involved in healthcare.
• Existing safety systems and their reporting requirements will be incorporated into the new information collection arrangements.
• Their will be direct feedback into healthcare of lessons learnt from analysis of the information collected.
• When a risk of danger is identified there will be solutions and rectification with positive tracking of the problem and the measures taken to alleviate it.

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