Improving patient safety culture: A practical toolkit for health and care workers (NHS England and AHSN Network, March 2023)

Summary

Safety culture has been a key and recurring theme in reports where there has been poor care. It’s ubiquity has hampered our understanding of what it is, and it has become apparent that it means different things to different people, and at different hierarchical levels. Without a common understanding of what we perceive safety culture to be, it is difficult to understand how to create a positive shift.

The toolkit from NHS England and the AHSN Network is currently a draft version (March 2023). It aims to give teams an understanding of how to craft, create and nurture a positive safety culture and provide a theoretical underpinning to how to shift the culture. It covers safety culture, teamwork and communication, just and restorative culture, psychological safety, promoting diversity inclusive behaviour, and civility. 

NHS staff can provide feedback on the draft toolkit through an online survey on the FutureNHS patient safety site. A final version of the toolkit will be published later this year.