Improving patient safety

Central to our work in services and systems transformation in healthcare is our award-winning support for improving patient safety. Read more about our work in services and system transformation.

This work delivered by the West of England Patient Safety Collaborative, one of 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) across the country, each hosted and coordinated by its local AHSN.

Our PSC is made up of all the NHS providers and commissioners across the region, including hospitals, mental health and community organisations, the ambulance service, primary care and clinical commissioning groups. It brings together local patients and healthcare staff, all driven by a shared vision to bring about system-wide improvements to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people in the care of our health services.

Our patient safety work programme is informed by the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, and the National Patient Safety Improvement Programmes (known as NatPatSIP) which are led by NHS England and Improvement. Read more about the NatPatSIP.

Our work to improve patient safety is themed across five local delivery plans (to find out more about each programme, please click the relevant link):

• Managing Deterioration
• Maternity and Neonatal 
• Medicines Safety
• Mental Health
• Adoption and Spread 

Through these local delivery plans, and Patient Safety Networks, our goal is to ensure that patients in the West of England can be confident that care is safer for patients based on a culture of openness, collaboration, continuous learning and quality improvement.

---

Our regional impact

Our work is highly regarded across the region and further afield.  We have been extremely successful in reacting to local priorities, and have delivered several ground-breaking region-wide projects including National Early Warning Score (known as NEWS2); Structured Mortality Reviews; ReSPECT; Emergency Laparotomy Collaborative; Emergency Department (ED) Safety Checklist and Human Factors.

• Publications: The work of the Patient Safety collaborative has been evaluated together with academic partners, resulting in several publications including BMJ Emergency Medicine Journal, Resuscitation, BMJ Open, Nursing Standard, Healthcare Manager, and Clinical Finance Journal.
• Our Awards include:
  • Maternity and Midwifery Services Initiative of the Year (HSJ 2019 Patient Safety Awards: PReCePT);
  • Award for Deteriorating Patients and Rapid Response Systems (HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2018: System-wide implementation of NEWS);
  • Best Patient Safety Initiative in A&E (HSJ Patient Safety Awards, 2017) and most proudly
  • BMJ Patient Safety team of the year (2018).
• We have been shortlisted for six 2021 Patient Safety HSJ Awards including:
  • Learning Disabilities Initiative of the Year  (the West of England Learning Disabilities Collaborative)
  • Patient Safety Education and Training Award (videos to support the training of carers to identify deterioration and communicate concern)
  • Patient Safety Pilot Project of the Year (PERIPrem – Perinatal Excellence to Reduce Injury in Premature Birth)
  • Quality Improvement Initiative of the Year (PreCePT – Prevention of Cerebral Palsy in PreTerm Labour)
• We were shortlisted for the 2020 HSJ Awards for
  • System Leadership Initiative of the Year (for ReSPECT),
  • Workforce initiative of the year (for PReCePT) and
  • our Medical Director Anne Pullyblank is shortlisted for Clinical Leader of the Year.

Our national impact

Many of the projects started in the region have been selected for national adoption and spread including National Early Warning Score (known as NEWS2), ED Safety Checklist, PReCePT and Emergency Laparotomy Collaborative, and members of the Patient Safety team spend time supporting and sharing our experience and knowledge and presenting our work outside the region.

Recently we have worked with Wessex AHSN in the development of a series of videos for Health Education England that have supported the training of over 900 care provider staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our West of England Learning Disability Collaborative was highlighted as an example of good practice in the 2020 Learning Disability Mortality Review (LeDeR) Learning Into Action report. You can read the Learning Into Action Report here.

Find out more about our Learning Disabilities Collaborative.

---

Responding to COVID – 2020: a journey through adversity

The 15 Patient Safety Collaboratives across England collectively responded to COVID-19 by rapidly reviewing all projects and programmes, and refocusing on the priority areas of identifying and managing people at risk of deterioration; implementing the safer tracheostomy care programme and providing support to local maternity and neonatal systems.

In the West of England, we rapidly converted our face-to-face RESTORE2 training for care homes into a virtual offering, enabling us to continue to reach providers in the region at pace and scale – read a review of our work during 2020.

We also held several virtual learning and sharing events to support the Learning Disabilities Collaborative and Maternity and Neonatal communities. We have also supported the rapid local implementation of pulse oximetry at home, and latterly virtual wards, and responded to other local needs in partnership with AHSN colleagues in digital and innovation. Click here to find out more about our work related to COVID-19.