Sign up to Safety
The national Sign up to Safety campaign was launched in 2014 and aims to make the NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. The three-year campaign objective is to halve avoidable harm. Organisations across the NHS have been invited to join Sign up to Safety and make five key pledges to improve safety and reduce avoidable harm.
Further information about the campaign is available on the NHS England website.
Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust joined the Sign up to Safety campaign in 2015 with the following five pledges:
Put safety first – Commit to reduce avoidable harm in the NHS by half and make public the goals and plans developed locally. We will:
- Measure accurately, report and publish our progress against key national and local quality and safety metrics; showing clear and measureable actions taken to address shortfalls in order to improve outcomes for patients.
- Support our staff across all of our services to recognise that safety is a priority and to be vigilant to the opportunities of improving safety through learning and improvement.
- Report to the Board; assurances and progress of how we are making our services safer and reducing harm within the Trust.
Continually learn – Make the organisation more resilient to risks, by acting on the feedback from patients and by constantly measuring and monitoring how safe their services are. We will:
- Act promptly on patient feedback from multiple sources including our monthly Friends and Family Test, patient experience surveys, external visits, peer review and complaints to focus improvements on clinical areas.
- Ensure that educational programme content is aligned to the safety priorities of the organisation and continue to develop quality improvement (QI) skills and an understanding of the importance of human factors through the Quality Improvement and Team STEPPS training Programmes.
- Share our learning through a variety of forums and materials- Trust induction, educational programmes, learning events, podcasts, newsletters, safety boards, ‘Lesson of the Month’ and SUI at a glance reports.
Honesty – Be transparent with people about our progress to tackle patient safety issues and support staff to be candid with patients and their families if something goes wrong. We will:
- Support and encourage our staff to adopt the Trust values and create a culture where they recognise their professional responsibilities and are supported to be open and transparent acknowledging when things go wrong.
- Promote awareness of our duty of candour as an organisation and as healthcare professionals, ensuring openness and transparency with patients supported by appropriate documentation and correspondence.
- Through our ‘root cause processes’ we will be clear in our priorities for reducing harm and improving patient safety to provide the best possible care to our patients.
Collaborate – Take a leading role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that improvements are made across all of the local services that patients use. We will:
- Maximise improvements in safety and quality through participation with Regional, National and International Collaborative’s.
- Work closely with other local health care or care providers and commissioning organisations to share best practice and improvements in patient safety and harm reduction.
- Empower and educate patients and staff around their safety through our safety materials and patient panels.
Support – Help people understand why things go wrong and how to put them right. Give staff the time and support them to improve and celebrate progress. We will:
- Continue to develop and implement human factors training for all staff groups
- Continue to use the annual NHS National Staff Survey and the Staff Friends & Family test to prioritise areas for improvement that are important to staff. Continue to engage staff through the staff engagement events, and the ‘Engaging Teams’ programme.
- Hold events to celebrate improvements and achievements Quality summit; Annual Staff Recognition awards, Schwartz Rounds and Grand Rounds
