Norfolk Primary Care Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy: Our Statement
Putting patient safety central to quality improvement and learning May 2025
Norfolk Primary Care – Patient Safety Strategy Statement May 2025 v2
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Table of Contents Foreword ................................................................................................3 Background ............................................................................................4 Our Commitment to Patient Safety: The Vision and Pledge ....................4
Norfolk Primary Care – Patient Safety Strategy Statement May 2025 v2
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Foreword In response to the NHS England (NHSE) Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy, we have explored the processes by which we investigate and learn from safety events within our organisation. The results of this were reassuring, in that NPC already had a mature governance process in place which demonstrated transparency, shared learning, and involvement of all parties who had been affected by the incident. However, our culture is to always strive for improvement and search for learning in whatever we do or deliver. Safety incidents are no different in this philosophy. Our vision to implement the NHS England Patient Safety Response Framework (PSIRF) formed part of the key priorities in our 2024/25 Quality Account. The aim of this approach is to enhance how we manage patient safety reviews, the quality of completed investigations, and the approaches to implementing learning outcomes. We continue to be committed to this key priority to reflect a supportive learning environment and a ‘Being Fair’ culture which emphasises fairness, accountability, and learning rather than apportioning blame. This is central to NPC’s approach and promotes quality improvement and staff empowerment in delivering safe care. We will be taking every opportunity to apply the approach of quality improvement to patient safety events to empower our staff in providing high quality, safe care for our patients via the full implementation of PSIRF into the organisation on or by 01.06.2025.
Emma Smith Chief Clinical Officer www.norfolkprimarycare.com
Norfolk Primary Care – Patient Safety Strategy Statement May 2025 v2
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Background In September 2024, NHS England (NHSE) launched its Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy. This was in response to the recognition that the NHS Patient Safety Strategy (2019) required more specific interpretation for Primary Care. The NHSE Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy outlines both National and Local commitments aimed at enhancing patient safety within Primary Care. It supports all areas in this sector in achieving full implementation of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy. The focus is to promote, support and encourage a learning culture when managing patient safety incident investigations. The sharing of learning across the system is promoted to further enhance improvement. The patient is central to these processes, and the involvement of staff ensures that the wellbeing and safety in the workplace is of paramount importance. Norfolk Primary Care (NPC) aims to enhance existing processes and governance frameworks through fully embedding the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) to investigate patient safety events and the sharing of patient safety incidents through the use of the Learning from Patient Safety Incident Recording System (LFPSE), stakeholders, and System Partners. This enhances processes and shares insights into patient safety incidents. Our Commitment to Patient Safety: The Vision and Pledge NPC, as an organisation, is patient focussed. We put patients, their carers and advocates central to why we do what we do, this is alongside the consideration of staff wellbeing in all of the clinical services we deliver to provide compassionate engagement with all of those affected with the active consideration of the sharing of information and learning with system partners. Patient safety investigations aim to uncover learning opportunities, which can be positive or negative events. The organisational model and governance frameworks for these investigations will be examined and refined to enhance the quality of outcomes achieved through those processes. All NPC staff (clinical and non-clinical) will have access to and will undertake the free online NHS patient safety syllabus training levels 1 & 2 to further create an understanding of the principles of a safety culture throughout the organisation. This will further support the implementation of the PSIRF principles. This, alongside the intention of the full implementation of PSIRF in NPC and the application of the principles of the NHSE Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy, will ensure that we are building a positive, compassionate patient safety culture which recognises that all staff play a part in quality improvement that build safer systems in the way we work.
Norfolk Primary Care – Patient Safety Strategy Statement May 2025 v2
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NPC promotes a ‘Being Fair’ culture, which is supported by the NHS England ‘Being Fair’ tool. This is a learning approach that focuses on harm done as a learning- focused, system-aware approach rather than singling out individuals to blame. By implementing these intentions, patient outcomes and experiences within NPC services will be enhanced and maximised by creating valuable opportunities to foster learning to improve both care and patient safety.
PSIRF
May 2025
Norfolk Primary Care – Patient Safety Strategy Statement May 2025 v2
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