NHS England - Safety Culture: learning from best practice (15 November 2022)

Summary

The NHS Patient Safety Strategy aims to monitor and support the development of a strong patient safety culture within the NHS, creating an environment where individuals feel they will be treated fairly and compassionately if they speak up. In this publication, NHS England collates insights from focus groups held with NHS organisations that are rated by the Care Quality Commission as outstanding or good for its ‘Safe’ assessment domain. The insights reflect what they have done to support a patient safety culture within their organisations.

Content

The report highlights six key themes, identified from discussions and good practice ideas, to help develop a safety culture:

1. Leadership
2. Continuous learning and improvement
3. Measurement and systems
4. Teamwork and communication
5. Psychological safety
6. Inclusion, diversity and narrowing healthcare inequalities

It also provides a brief overview of three case studies, with links to full versions of these on the FutureNHS Collaboration Platform.