Partner Article

Safety standards top of the agenda for clinicians

Frontline clinicians from across the North came together to discuss how collaboration could be key to ensuring consistency in safety standards for invasive procedures in the region.

Almost 100 leading clinicians, safety leads and managers attended the North East and North Cumbria Patient Safety Collaborative workshop in Darlington. The aim of the event was to ensure NHS clinicians and staff involved in performing or commissioning invasive procedures in the region were fully aware of new national safety requirements.

The National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures (NatSSIPs) were developed last year in response to calls for standardisation to reduce surgical never events. All organisations providing NHS funded care will also be required to develop and test Local Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures (LocSSIPs), based on these national standards by September this year.

The Academic Health Science Network for the North East and North Cumbria (AHSN NENC) delivered the recent workshop, on behalf of NHS Improvement, to support the effective implementation of the standards at a local level through its Patient Safety Collaborative programme. The one-off workshop saw leading NHS experts travel from across the country to share experiences and to hear about:

• What needs to be done, and more importantly why
• The impact that never events have on patients, staff and organisations
• The scale and nature of the problem in the North East
• How to learn from never events when they do happen
• The experience of pioneer sites in developing LocSSIPs
• How to use behaviour change theory to address some of the human barriers to implementation
• Outcomes based planning, which will assist in measuring the success of the implementation

Professor Oliver James, Medical Director for the AHSN NENC said: “The event was a real success with scores of NHS staff across a range of fields attending to find out more about the requirements of the safety standards.

“As a region, the North East and North Cumbria is committed to putting the safety of patients first and we know that by working together and sharing knowledge we can make great strides. This workshop provided a fantastic opportunity for secondary care professionals to prepare and plan for changes ahead. It’s great to hear such positive feedback from delegates about how valuable it was to learn from others.

“We appreciate that there are still some concerns about the scale of the task ahead and we are giving consideration to how we might support the development of LocSSIPs or opportunities to collaborate in doing so.”

One delegate commented: “I enjoyed the study day and it gave us a great opportunity to network and the potential to engage with other trusts in the development of our own LocSSIPS.”

Another said: “The key to making this stick is commissioners moving away from target measures of adverse outcomes to cultural change team working and rewarding excellent care.”

This was a major theme of the event, picked up in the sessions on ‘Outcome based planning’ delivered by Steve Callaghan of EQE Health and ‘Behaviour change’ by Del Wijerante, from the Yorkshire and Humber Improvement Academy.

The suggestion that there might be a national template LocSSIP was broadly welcomed, as was the opportunity to share example LocSSIPs via the NHS Improvement website.

One of the key points of discussion surrounded the specific requirements of the Safety Alert that need to be achieved by September 2016. NHS Improvement has clarified these as follows:

“We are aware of some confusion over the actions required by the September 2016 deadline in the Patient Safety Alert ’Supporting the introduction of the National Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures’. The fourth action in the alert asks organisations to “Commence implementation of procedures and practice compliant with LocSSIPS [Local Safety Standards for Invasive Procedures] within cycles of continuous improvement including consideration of teamwork and training, human factors and cultural aspects of compliance“. There is no expectation for organisations to have fully implemented all their LocSSIPs by September 2016 but they should be able to demonstrate that implementation has commenced.“

The AHSN NENC’s Patient Safety Collaborative is keen to continue to support clinicians across the region as they develop their LocSSIPs. Anyone who would like to find out more can contact Andreia Cavaco on 0191 208 2036 or by email at andreia.cavaco@ahsn-nenc.org.uk

For more information on the AHSN’s PSC programme and the projects it supports in the region, visit: http://ahsn-nenc.org.uk/project_type/patient-safety/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by HEALTH NEWS .