After a safety event in healthcare, NHS Trusts may conduct a Patient Safety Incident Investigation. Listening to and valuing different perspectives within a Patient Safety Incident Investigation can support patients and families to heal, and can support organisations to learn.
Here at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (MCHFT), we understand that things don’t always go as expected but are fully committed to understanding why this was the case and what improvements need to be made to reduce the risk of it happening again in the future.
At MCHFT we have adopted a Patient Safety incident Response Framework or PSIRF as part of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy.
Published by NHS England in August 2022 The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) is a new approach to the way the NHS looks at Patient Safety Incidents and places the focus on learning and improving, in turn creating a safer care system for patients.
Relacing the Serious Incident Framework (2015), PSIRF represents a significant shift in the way the NHS responds to patient safety incidents and supports the development and maintenance of an effective patient safety incident response system.
PSIRF has four key elements:
- Compassionate engagement and involvement of those affected by patient safety incident
- Application of a range of system-based approached to learning from patient safety incidents
- Considered and proportionate responses to patient safety incidents
- Supportive oversight focused on strengthening response system functioning and improvement.
We are now in the embedding phase and firmly believe the PSIRF has shaped the way we respond to patient safety incidents and the ways in which we are making services safer. It has also created the opportunity to focus on the things that are important and which matter to patients, families and staff who have affected by a patient safety incident.
To guide our work, we have produced a PSIRF Policy. This sets out how we approach the development and maintenance of effective incident and response systems, and a PSIRF Plan which details how we intend to respond to patient safety incidents.
These can be viewed by clicking on the links below.
Further information can also be found watching the Introducing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework video below.
How will I be involved in this?
Take a look at the video below which shares information about how you might be involved in this process.
You can find out more on the Learn Together website.
You can also listen to a dedicated NHS England podcast, specifically on the topic of involving patients and families following a safety incident here.
If you would like more information about PSIRF at Mid Cheshire please contact our dedicated team on PSIRFImplementation