Scottish Patient Safety Alliance
The strength of our work in this area since 2003 led the Scottish Government to ask us to lead the co-ordination of a new initiative, the Scottish Patient Safety Alliance, in which all hospitals across Scotland will take part.
The Alliance will involve staff at all levels taking simple steps to reduce unnecessary harm as a result of things like preventable infections, or errors in prescribing.
These steps include identifying good practice and ensuring that these are consistently applied across key areas. For example: setting up processes to ensure all patients receive the right medicine at the right time and in the right dose; implementing monitoring systems to identify deteriorating patients more quickly; and looking at ways to improve hand hygiene compliance.
The programme has five objectives, to:
- reduce healthcare associated infection
- reduce adverse surgical incidents
- reduce adverse drug events
- improve critical care outcomes
- improve the organisational and leadership culture on safety.
Alliance partners include: the Scottish Government, NHS boards, Royal Colleges, professional bodies, organisations such as the Scottish Consumer Council and patients.
How do we know this approach works?
The Alliance will build on the successful Safer Patients Initiative piloted in Tayside, which has delivered:
- a reduction in adverse events of more than 50 per cent
- improvements in medicine management. The goal was to reduce the number of prescriptions which required amendments from 70 per cent to less than 10 per cent. The NHS Tayside team managed as low as 2.6 per cent.
- a steady increase in hand hygiene compliance to 94 per cent, as measured by ward staff, over two years, and
- a more systematic approach to communication between staff, ensuring enhanced patient safety.
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