Primary care patient safety strategy launched

NHS England are pleased to announce that the Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy has now been published: NHS England » Primary care patient safety strategy .

Co-designed with NHS front-line staff and lay patient safety partners, the strategy builds on the wider NHS Patient Safety Strategy and aims to develop a supportive environment within primary care where learning can be shared more widely to benefit patient and staff safety and wellbeing. The intention is to ensure that we manage safety with an approach based on safety science and systems thinking.

The strategy seeks to build on existing provision and support staff to better involve patients in work to improve safety. It highlights patient safety training for staff, and modernised incident recording and response systems.

It sets the ambition and vision for patient safety in primary care to encourage discussion and exploration. It is not about implementing everything on day one in all sectors of primary care. The strategy draws together best practice, providing a range of ideas and opportunities that can be shared. It is not a contractual requirement on primary care providers, or ICBs.

NHS England will continuously review its effectiveness and how they can best implement the strategy to improve patient safety. They will be developing implementation plans for each area to test ideas and generate supporting information.