Mark Hughes
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Everything posted by Mark Hughes
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Content ArticleOn 25 February 2026, healthcare leaders and stakeholders gathered in London for the Patient Safety Forum, organised by Public Policy Projects (PPP) in partnership with Patient Safety Learning. This blog summarises two sessions at this event which explored how the patient voice can meaningfully contribute to service improvement, and why better care is contingent on a supported, healthy workforce. Read the full article from PPP via the link below.
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Content ArticleThis report looks at the past three years since the introduction of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and its application in the independent sector. It explains how the Independent Healthcare Providers Network has been supporting its members to implement PSIRF and outlines key learnings that have emerged from this.
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Content ArticleOn 25 February 2026, healthcare leaders and stakeholders gathered in London for the Patient Safety Forum, organised by Public Policy Projects (PPP) in partnership with Patient Safety Learning. This blog draws on discussions from two panels at this event which tackled pivotal questions: How to embed safety as a foundational element of healthcare quality Why so many well-intentioned safety recommendations fail to be implemented. With NHS reforms and resource constraints shaping the landscape, these panels offered a compelling call to action for integrating patient safety as a cornerstone of change. Read the full article from PPP via the link below.
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Content ArticleThe 10 Year Health Plan for England envisions a major shift from hospital to community, towards the creation of a Neighbourhood Health Service. This is intended to bring care into local communities, convene professionals into patient-centred teams and end fragmentation. This policy paper, published by the Department of Health and Social Care, sets out how Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), local authorities, health and wellbeing boards and other partners should create and deliver neighbourhood health services.
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Content ArticleThis report from Press Ganey draws on data from 1.3 million employees, 23.5 million patients, and 7.1 million safety events to examine where safety performance is strengthening, where it remains fragile, and what leadership actions will accelerate progress. It uses national safety culture data, workforce engagement metrics, patient safety event reporting patterns, safety outcomes, and patient experience insights.
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This interactive session, hosted by the NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service, forms part of the ‘Medication Safety Across the System’ (MSATS) series aimed at healthcare professionals, working in any sector with a role or passion for medication safety and/or involved in medicines use. Speakers share their experience of using the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) and learning response tools to support medication safety improvements. They aim to inspire and equip translation and replication across systems. What will be covered: The impact that embedding medication safety within PSIRF plans can have on the safer use of medicines. Current barriers and challenges to embedding medication safety in PSIRF. The importance of ensuring that the patient and carer perspective is central to PSIRF implementation. Shared exemplar practices where medication safety has been effectively included within PSIRF plans to inform local adaptation. Opportunities to network with peers to inform the development of appropriate local and system wide actions to embed medication safety in PSIRF plans. Register here. -
Content ArticleThis update presents statistics from the Learn from Patient Safety Events (LFPSE) service, a national NHS system for the recording and analysis of patient safety events that occur in healthcare. The LFPSE definition of a patient safety incident is something unexpected or unintended has happened, or failed to happen, that could have or did lead to patient harm for one or more person(s) receiving healthcare. This report shares the patient safety incident data from October to December 2025.
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In this article, Patient Safety Learning reflects on the results of the NHS Staff Survey 2025, focusing on responses relating to reporting, speaking up and acting on patient safety concerns. -
Content ArticleThe NHS Staff Survey is one of the largest workforce surveys in the world and is carried out every year to improve staff experiences across the NHS. It asks staff in England about their experiences of working for their respective NHS organisations. Over 1.5 million NHS employees in England were invited to participate in the survey, with 729,423 staff responding in 2025.
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Content ArticleMore than two years after the Hughes Report was published, the UK Government has yet to provide a clear timeline for implementing a compensation scheme for the thousands of patients harmed by pelvic mesh and valproate. Published in February 2024 by the Patient Safety Commissioner for England, Professor Henrietta Hughes, the report examined options for redress for patients and families affected by these interventions. In this letter to the Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Professor Hughes urges him to ensure that a clear timetable is set and that financial redress is delivered without further delay.
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On the 23 June 2025 the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced a rapid, national, independent investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services. This interim report reflects what families, staff and others have told the investigation team and what the latter has seen themselves. Women and families across England are still being asked to share their experiences of maternity and neonatal care through a public call for evidence which is open until the 17 March 2026. -
Content ArticleIn this blog Paul Galdas, Professor of Men's Health at University of York, reflects on the implementation of the Men's Health Strategy for England. He argues that if the strategy is to make a difference, its impact will depend less on changing men’s behaviour and more on how health systems are designed to respond, particularly for those experiencing intersecting disadvantage.
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Content ArticleIn 2025 the Department of Health in Northern Ireland held a consultation on the introduction of a new Regional Framework for Learning and Improvement from Patient Safety Incidents to replace the existing Serious Adverse Incident Procedure. This report provides an analysis and summary of the comments made in response to each consultation question. It also covers comments and views shared during consultation events and those in formal consultation response submissions to the Department of Health.
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Content ArticleThe Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) regulates medicines, medical devices and blood components for transfusion in the UK. This roundup provides a summary of their latest safety advice for medicines and medical device users. It includes details of medicine recalls, medical device field safety notices and details of how to report drug reactions and device incidents.
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Content ArticleThe Department of Health's Being Open Framework for Health and Social Care Northern Ireland is aimed at supporting a culture of openness, honesty, and transparency across health and social care in Northern Ireland. The Framework provides a standardised, yet flexible, regional approach to help create the conditions where a culture of openness and trust can flourish between those who use our services, their families and carers, health and social care staff and leaders and organisations.
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Content ArticleIn this article, published in the Integrated Care Journal, Alex Kafetz sets out how transparency and data-driven insight – once championed through tools like the original Dr Foster Hospital Guide, have taken a backseat amid operational pressures in the NHS. He makes the case that NHS leaders must renew their focus on quality, using robust analytics to identify risk, reduce unwarranted variation and act sooner.
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This year will mark the publication of the first comprehensive Quality Strategy for the NHS in over fifteen years. In this blog, Patient Safety Learning and the Advancing Quality Alliance (Aqua) set out the need for safety to serve as a golden thread woven throughout the Strategy. -
Content ArticleThis report is the outcome of an inquiry by the Women and Equalities Committee which considered the safety of surgical cosmetic procedures, such as breast implants, and non-surgical cosmetic procedures such as fillers and liquid Brazilian butt lifts (BBLs).
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Content ArticleMedication safety remains a significant concern within healthcare systems globally. This systematic review, published in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, aims to identify the various human factors frameworks used for medication error analysis in healthcare, synthesise reported contributory factors, and assess the reliability metrics of these frameworks. The review included 43 studies that took place in 16 different countries between 2002 and 2024.
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Content ArticlePatient safety monitoring systems endeavour to manage patient safety data and improve overall safety within healthcare organisations. This study, published in BMJ Health & Care Informatics, aimed to characterise the implementation of and outputs of such systems across hospital settings. It found that patient safety monitoring systems can be used for enhancing safety practices, reducing adverse events and promoting a culture of patient safety.
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Content ArticleThis letter from NHS England provides an update on a significant disruption that has emerged in relation to the supply of bone cement products sold by Heraeus Medical. A packaging fault temporarily halted production at Heraeus’ main production site. Whilst production has now restarted, product availability will be impacted for at least two months. The update advises that stock already in the UK supply chain may be sufficient for ~two weeks’ supply, at normal ordering volumes, beyond this there will be a period of six-eight weeks’ gap in supply.
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Content ArticlePatient safety incident reporting in maternity care is central for improving safety, yet inconsistencies in reporting practices and limited understanding of system functionalities may reduce its effectiveness. This review, published in BMJ Open Quality, explores how patient safety incidents are reported in maternity care, identifies the systems used globally, examines potential barriers and enablers to reporting, and highlights gaps in existing research and practice.
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Content ArticleA positive patient safety culture is integral to reducing preventable harm and improving healthcare outcomes. In many low- and middle-income countries, there is a lack of structured measurement of patient safety culture, hindering the identification of systemic weaknesses. This study, published in Cureus, assessed patient safety culture in a secondary care public hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, using the Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture tool, with the aim of identifying strengths, weaknesses, and predictors of a robust safety culture.
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EventMembers of the Patients for Patient Safety US network of Patient Safety Champions and Strategic Partners played a direct role in developing and advocating for the successful adoption of the Patient Safety Structural Measure (PSSM) into the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Reporting Program. That was a landmark achievement, but the real work is just beginning. This webinar provides an update this, as beginning in April, hospital leaders will start submitting Attestation Statements to CMS indicating whether the 25 best practices specified in the PSSM are in place at their institutions. CMS will score these statements and publicly report the results for the first time later this year. Register here.
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Content ArticleThis is a brief summary of a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons on the 11 February 2026 concerning the second anniversary of The Hughes Report on valproate and pelvic mesh.
