Q blog: Four icons of patient safety (30 September 2020)

Summary

The NHS Patient Safety Strategy requires every Trust to have a Patient Safety Specialist: an evolving role with the purpose of ensuring that “systems thinking, human factors and just culture principles are embedded in all patient safety activity”.

Patient safety is a big topic, and apart from a general sense of frustration that we don’t seem to be making any progress, there’s little agreement about what the problems are, let alone the solutions.

Q member, John Tansley discusses his philosophy of patient safety through four key icons, and reflects on how this can inform and shape the evolving role of Patient Safety Specialists.