SPSP Learning System

Working with health and social care services to share learning to improve the safety and reliability of care and reduce harm

The SPSP Learning System underpins the work of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme. It aims to accelerate the sharing of learning and improvement work and encourage continuous learning at all levels, in every care setting.

Activity within the SPSP Learning System includes the examples below.

• The Essentials of Safe Care (EoSC) was published in 2021. This package of evidenced based guidance and support identifies four essentials as being central to supporting the safe delivery of care in any setting. These essentials are person centred care, safe communications, leadership & culture and safe clinical and care processes.
• Attendance at the SPSP National Learning Event 2022 enabled participants to apply their learning into work and identify new areas for improvement. The event also facilitated networking within and between teams across boards and at national level.
• The SPSP Members Area launched in 2022. Following registration, it offers access to improvement data from SPSP programmes through a Microsoft Teams channel.
• The State Hospital used the EoSC resources to undertake meaningful, structured conversations around patient safety priorities within the hospital. 
• The SPSP Acute Adult Team published a case study identifying the core elements of hospital huddles, a key tool identified within the EoSC in the management of communication in critical situations.

Support for health and social care services

We support health and social care services by accelerating the sharing of learning in the following ways.

• Leading and designing webinars and national learning events.
• Facilitating meetings and networks to engage on relevant issues, highlight good practice and encourage peer-to-peer support.
• Developing case studies which promote examples and impacts of improvement work.
• Signposting and promoting resources which combine evidence and existing knowledge whilst complementing and supporting current guidance and standards.
• Publishing improvement data from NHS boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), and GP practices and clusters to promote the impact of improvement work.
• Offering bespoke improvement support.

Get involved

You can get involved in the SPSP Learning System by:

• attending our upcoming SPSP webinars and SPSP national learning events,
• reviewing our previous SPSP event listings and accessing resources and recordings from these events (select patient safety to filter for SPSP events)
• accessing our SPSP Resource Library to view the range of improvement and redesign, clinical and care resources along with evidence, evaluation reports, improvement examples and case studies, 
• using the SPSP Essentials of Safe Care change package to implement the essentials that can support you to achieve the overall aim of delivering safe care for every person, within every setting, every time, and
• registering to access our SPSP members area to view improvement data from NHS boards across Scotland.

Get in touch

Email us at his.pspcontact@nhs.scot if you have a question about the SPSP Learning System or if would like to speak to a member of the team about getting involved.