Safe care for every newborn and child - a blog series for World Patient Safety Day 2025

Summary

In support of World Patient Safety Day 2025 and the theme, ‘Safe care for every newborn and child’, we published a series of specially commissioned guest blogs. These contributions have come from many different perspectives, including healthcare professionals, patients, public bodies and academics.

Content

Our World Patient Safety Day blog series

1.    The safety issues affecting children in intensive care

hub topic lead, Peter Sidgwick, consultant in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) and Associate Medical Director at Great Ormond Street Hospital, reflects on working in PICU and highlights some of the risks. He discusses the safety measures in place that mitigate these risks and keep children as safe as possible while they are in PICU.

2.    Addressing racial inequalities in paediatric diabetes

Dita Aswani and Fulya Mehta are both consultant paediatricians and NHS England national advisors for Children and Young adults’ diabetes. In this blog, they outline racial inequalities that persist in paediatric diabetes and present five key areas for change. In summary they talk about what healthcare professionals can do to reduce inequalities through their own practice. 

3.    The role of UK ambulance services in supporting safe maternity and newborn care

Ambulance services play a pivotal role in ensuring the safety of mothers and their newborns during urgent and emergency situations. In this blog, Ann Moses, Patient safety response lead, and Stephanie Heys, Consultant Midwife, from the Northwest Ambulance Service consider this in more detail.

4.    Evidencing the impact of culture on patient safety – a new tool from MNSI

In this interview, Chris McQuitty, a clinical fellow at the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigation (MNSI) programme, talks about a new patient safety tool, COMPASS (Culture of Organisations and its iMpact on PAtientS’ Safety). This is currently being piloted to help understand the impact organisational culture may have on patient safety in maternity settings.

5.    Children with eating disorders: a patient safety focus

Eating disorders are serious mental health problems that can severely affect the quality of life of children and their families. In this blog, Hope Virgo, an award-winning mental health campaigner, explores the patient safety issues affecting children with eating disorders and their families. Hope highlights how lack of investment and understanding is leading to avoidable harm and shares five key actions for change. 

6.    We need to make inclusive communication standard practice for children’s safety

Communication challenges can make children particularly vulnerable to patient safety incidents. In this blog, Rachael Grimaldi, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of CardMedic, talks about the importance of embracing inclusive communication not just as a ethical imperative, but a practical pathway to safer outcomes.

7.    The Green Maternity Challenge: delivering safe, low carbon care

Angela Hayes is a Nurse Fellow and Project Lead at The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. In this article she tells us more about the Green Maternity Challenge and draws on three case studies to highlight it’s success in delivering low carbon, equitable and safe maternity care. The case studies look at local screening for newborn developmental hip dysplasia, supporting breast-feeding and reducing health-inequalities for Albanian-speaking women. 

8.   Patient safety in humanitarian settings

In this article Anna Freeman, a nurse and quality of care advisor for Médecins sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders, describes the challenges faced in assuring patient safety in humanitarian settings and offers suggestions for how international medical aid organisations can build patient safety systems.