Creating the conditions for Safety
Patient safety within primary care isn’t always as safe as you might think. Implementing this workstream within your practice involves the whole practice team raising awareness of the role they each play in improving patient safety.
The tools below will help you communicate more effectively within your team, narrow and focus on the issues within your practice, reduce patient safety incidents, and support your practice to deliver care you can be proud of.
Safety Climate Surveys
It’s essential that every staff member understands the key role they play in ensuring and improving patient safety. Only by instilling a culture of reflective learning and improvement can we create a positive and strong environment for patient safety.
Find out more about how you can apply the survey in your primary care setting:
- Dentistry safety climate survey
- Community pharmacy safety climate survey
- GP practice safety climate survey
Trigger tool
A trigger tool is a simple checklist for a number of selected clinical ‘triggers’. A reviewer looks for these triggers when screening medical records for patients who may have been unintentionally harmed.
Communication
An essential component of a safe system for managing test results is communicating effectively with staff and patients about what the test results show and what needs to happen next. The Medical Protection Society cited ambiguous/unclear comments from GPs to read out to patients as being a significant risk i.e. ‘abnormal, no action’.
- Patient Information (PDF)
- Patient Feedback (PDF)
- Examples of Communication (PDF)
- Key Discussion Points (PDF)
Improving together interactive portal
This portal includes a range of resources that are aimed at people working in Primary Care, who are interested in improvement work.
Visit Improving Together interactive portal
If you're looking for inspiration, visit the case studies section which highlights some of the improvement work happening at local level.