Is the NHS 'Sign up to Safety' Campaign Working?
Launched in 2014 to make the NHS a safer environment, the 'Sign up to Safety' campaign had highly laudable aims. But is it achieving its goals?
What is 'Sign up to Safety'?
The 'Sign up to Safety' initiative was launched by the Secretary of State for Health in 2014, aiming to improve patient care across the NHS through reducing avoidable harm and saving lives.
By encouraging organisations from across the entire healthcare service to join up and commit to how they would improve patient safety within their organisation, the campaign intended to make the NHS the safest healthcare system in the world.
Every organisation that joined the campaign was required to commit to the following five key pledges:
- Putting safety first
- Continually learn
- Be honest
- Collaborate
- Be supportive
Each member organisation was also expected to identify how they would implement those five pledges within their organisation.
Underpinning the objectives of the campaign was the aim to turn the NHS into an environment which encourages open and honest listening and learning and responding. Medical professionals are encouraged to listen to patients as well as each other, to learn from mistakes, and to support each other in find solutions to problems.
'Sign up to Safety' Progress
Around 500 organisations from all aspects of the healthcare service have so far signed up to the campaign and expressed their commitment to the five pledges.
Organisations such as hospitals, care homes, GP surgeries, mental health trusts and hospices have joined the initiative to work more safely and improve patient care.
The campaign offers resources, webinars, podcasts and publicity materials to support member organisations in planning and maintaining their pledges to improve patient safety.
Commitments by member organisations
The definition of commitments within these organisations differs from those offering highly-specific goals to demonstrate improvement to those proposing more generic changes to processes and the working environment.
Many of the healthcare organisations that have signed up to safety have chosen to focus their safety endeavours on very important aspects of patient care that continue to cause problems and patient deaths. These include the following:
- Improving the diagnosis of sepsis
- Reducing the number of patient falls, especially in the elderly
- Reducing the occurrence of pressure ulcers
- Preventing the occurrence of 'never events'
- Ensuring safety around medication
- Detecting acute kidney injuries
- Maintaining safe staffing levels
- Reducing surgical site infections
- Ensuring safe surgery
- Reducing the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections
Sign up to Safety in 2018
The campaign continues to encourage conversations about safety throughout the NHS with 'National Kitchen Table Week' meetings proposed in member organisations during March 2018.
What progress?
Many of the issues identified by organisations that have signed up to 'Sign up to Safety' continue to dog the NHS with little sign of improvement:
- Research in 2017 found that up to 250,000 may suffer with sepsis in the UK each year with over 10,000 dying from it unnecessarily
- A recent report by Sheffield and York universities found that approximately 237 million medication errors occur in the NHS each year, of which approximately 5 million have the potential to cause severe harm
- The Churchill Hospital in Oxford warned this winter that it would have to reduce its level of care to cancer patients due to a shortage of suitably-trained staff
- NHS Improvement identified 424 'never events' during the period April 2016 - March 2017
Medical Negligence
Despite best intentions, patients continue to suffer from substandard levels of medical care in a variety of fields and many of the issues identified in the above list clearly remain problematic.
If a patient suffers significant, long-term harm due to a failing in medical care, they may be entitled to make a claim for compensation.
Contact Glynns Solicitors to talk to a specialist medical negligence solicitor if you have been the victim of poor medical care such as late diagnosis of sepsis or necrotising fasciitis or have suffered the appalling impact of negligent surgery.
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