Summary
Patient Safety Learning has submitted the attached response to the NHS consultation on draft requirements for Patient Safety Specialist roles.
Content
The NHS Patient Safety Strategy, published in June 2019, sets out three strategic aims around Insight, Involvement and Improvement which will enable it to achieve its safety vision. It defines the Involvement aim as ‘equipping patients, staff and partners with the skills and opportunities to improve patient safety throughout the whole system’.
A key action associated with this is a proposal to create Patient Safety Specialists within each NHS organisation in England. The strategy explains that ‘giving everyone in the NHS a foundation level understanding of patient safety is critical, but we also need experts to lead on safety in their own organisations’.NHS England and NHS Improvement have published draft Patient Safety Specialist requirements for public consultation.
Patient Safety Learning welcome any increase in patient safety capacity and expertise in the NHS and have provided specific feedback on the draft requirements for this role. In our response we identify several areas where we believe these can be improved, including the following points:
- Patient Safety Specialists having a clear and direct reporting line to a named executive director on the Board with an assigned patient safety role and to a non-executive director with a similar role.
- Ensuring that the requirements identify key relationships for the role holders not identified in the draft document: Medical Examiners, Coroners, Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, Governors, Non-Executive Board Members, HR Directors and NHS Resolution.
- Including a requirement that Patient Safety Specialists should demonstrate that they have the right skills and experience to work with patients, families and their carers on patient safety issues. They should also show that they can support their organisation to engage effectively in co-production with these groups.
- The need to strengthen the requirements for the individuals holding these roles to have knowledge and experience of: Investigations, Complaints, Just Culture, Systems Thinking and Human Factors.
- Giving consideration to how Patient Safety Specialists will engage with frontline staff, who are notable by their lack of reference in the draft requirements.
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