Patient Safety Specialist
This includes ensuring that their organisation have effective processes in place that cross directorate or divisional structures and that these link effectively to national safety systems. This role includes supporting the organisation to ensure that the patient is at the centre of all patient safety activity.
The post holder will work closely and collaboratively with those within the organisation who already have specific patient safety responsibilities. Several patient safety roles have been created in response to initiatives led by Department of Health and Social Care or NHS England and NHS Improvement.
The postholder will support an aligned approach to the improvement of safety through these roles and avoid duplication of effort. Depending on the nature of the organisation these include: Medication safety officer (MSO), Medical device safety officer (MDSO), Central Alerting System (CAS) officer, Controlled drugs accountable officer (CDAO), Revalidation Officer (RO), Medical Examiner (ME), Learning from deaths lead, safeguarding leads, Maternity safety champion and GIRFT lead.
The patient safety specialist will lead /support the local implementation of the NHS patient safety strategy which supports the three strategic aims of improving understanding of safety (insight), equipping patients, staff and partners with the skills and opportunities to improve patient safety (involvement) and designing and supporting programmes that deliver effective and sustainable change (improvement).The patient safety specialist ensures the organisation is up to date with current patient safety policy, NHS contract patient safety requirements, and regulatory patient safety requirements and engages with the4 regional/national team to understand national guidance and to advise the Board on the best implementation approach.
The postholder will work collaboratively with external organisations to develop links and relationships with patient safety and other relevant leads in networks to share good practice and act collaboratively to improve patient safety. They will create networks as required, including across their ICS, if not already in place.Responsibility for / oversight of the implementation of the NHS patient safety strategy within the organisation Provide patient safety expertise/leadership within the organisation; demonstrating compassionate leadership, visibility and supporting the continued development of the patient safety culture Oversee and support patient safety improvement, ensuring that systems thinking, human factors understanding and just culture principles are embedded in patient safety processes.
Ensure the organisation has a robust and effective patient safety strategy in place which aligns with the NHS patient safety strategy. Promote patient safety insight as an approach that incorporates understanding all sources of patient safety intelligence, including from incidents, risk assessments, investigations, mortality and morbidity reviews, inquests, research, clinical audits, GIRFT reviews, positive experience, compliments and complaints, litigation, patient and staff surveys, in line with the measurement principles set out in the NHS Patient Safety Strategy.
Ensure information and intelligence from these sources is used as the basis for prioritising local patient safety development and ensuring proposed improvement approaches are based on an understanding of underlying causes Support the effective collation, analysis and presentation of qualitative and quantitative patient safety data and provide regular and tailored reports to all relevant committees, the organisations Board and external agencies as required, integrating these data sources to give a comprehensive and patient-centred picture of patients safety challenges, improvement opportunities and achievements Communicate patient safety issues, including the definition, framing, escalation and presentation of identified issues, risks and proposed improvement approaches at executive/board level Support / lead multi-professional responses to patient safety incidents, tailoring the different approaches required for new or under-recognised issues and wider patient safety challenges needing5long-term improvement, ensuring adherence to national policies and enabling timely and good quality reporting Support an approach to patient safety that drives improvement across the patient pathway beyond the organisations boundaries, including facilitating multi-agency reviews where required.
Support / lead the implementation of continuous improvement of quality and impact of incident investigations, currently through the new Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) Ensure mechanisms/policies are in place so that insights lead to actionable recommendations/improvements that can be evidenced, measured and monitored across the organisation from all internal and external organisational reviews, high level enquiries and reports relating to patient safety.Make informed decisions based on highly complex and sensitive information available from multiple sources, including patient safety incident data. Support (in providers) the Executives systems for the response to National Patient Safety Alerts, including systems for Executive identification of clinical leaders for the coordinated cross-organisational delivery of each Alert designated complex, and robust systems for Executive authorisation of actions completed.
Oversee patient safety improvement programmes that support the NHS patient safety strategy