The Learn Together programme (part A): co-designing an approach to support patient and family involvement and engagement in patient safety incident investigations (26 March 2025)

Summary

Whilst patients and families can and do support patient safety in several ways, empirical evidence for the specific impact of involvement in patient safety incident investigations and their outcomes, has been limited, with little information about how to undertake involvement meaningfully.

The authors of this paper aimed to (i) develop a set of common principles to guide involvement of patients and families in patient safety incident investigations; (ii) develop a working programme theory for how these might be enacted; (iii) co-design guidance to support the meaningful involvement of patients and families in patient safety incident investigations.

They developed ten ‘common principles” and a working programme theory for an approach that might support meaningful patient and family involvement in incidents investigations. Based on these principles and the programme theory, they co-designed guidance to be used within NHS Trust and national investigations of harm that follow patient safety incidents. The guidance includes information, resources and tools to enable better understanding and practice, from the perspective of patients, families, investigators and staff, on how to be meaningfully involved.