Scottish Patient Safety Programme Resources

The Essentials of Safe Care is a key resource that underpins the whole Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP). Programme-specific resources are also available, including the toolkits, clinical and care tools, case studies and reports below that can be used by health and social care services to improve the safety and reliability of care and reduce harm.

Recordings and resources from past SPSP events can be viewed on our events pages by searching "Patient Safety" under areas of work.

Click on the section headings below to display the lists of resources. Click on the resource name to open the resource.

Improvement and redesign resources
- Essentials of Safe Care: 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.
- Falls Resources: These resources support NHS boards to make improvements to support the reduction of falls and falls with harm. Resources include a falls change package- also available in an accessible version- that signposts to a range of guidelines and resources, a falls measurement framework to support in the gathering of data, and a webinar led by Professor Brian Dolan OBE. focused on Falls: How we might make falls everyone's business.
- Deteriorating Patient Resources: This resource will support NHS boards to improve the recognition and response to deterioration and associated reduction in the cardiac arrest rate Resources include a deteriorating patient change package that signposts to a range of guidelines and resources. Also included is a measurement framework to support in the gathering of data.
- SPSP Mental Health Safety Climate Resources: Contains information for measuring individual staff and patient safety climate.
- Pressure Ulcer Resources: The aim of the pressure ulcer change package is to provide evidence-based guidance to support the prevention of acquired pressure ulcers developed in a care setting. In addition to the Pressure Ulcer Change Package, resources include the Pressure Ulcer Measurement Framework and the Pressure Ulcer Measurement Toolkit.
Clinical and care resources
- Medicines Sick Day Rules card: Tools to support safe person-centred conversations between health and care staff and patients about their medicines and dehydration. Resource includes Patient Information Leaflet and Briefing for Professionals.
- Acute Prescribing Toolkit: Toolkit to help primary care multidisciplinary teams safely improve acute prescribing processes. Resource provides acute prescribing tools and local examples aligned to the steps of the NHS Education for Scotland Quality Improvement Journey.
- Acute Prescribing Quick Guide: This guide sets out seven change ideas to help with safely improving acute prescribing processes in line with the Essentials of Safe Care. These ideas were tested by Scottish primary care services as part of the Acute Prescribing Learning Network.
- Serial Prescription Toolkit: Toolkit to support practice multidisciplinary teams set-up or rapidly review serial prescription process. Resource outlines the essential stages and signposts to a range of nationally and locally developed resources, examples and quality improvement tools.
- Sepsis Toolkit: Toolkit bringing together resources and tools to help with the prompt recognition and treatment for Sepsis to support improved outcomes for patients.
- Learning from Cardiac Arrest Tools: These resources are designed to support acute hospital teams to use quality improvement methods to improve the processes of identifying and learning from cardiac arrests. This work includes a Readiness for Change Assessment Tool which will help assess how ready your organisation and team are for change along with an improvement resource for identifying and learning from cardiac arrests. A case study showing how this work was developed across Scotland is also available.
- Structured Response to Deteriorating Patient: The principles have been co-designed with clinicians to support acute hospital teams with their response to the deteriorating patient. Included within this resource package is a Table Top Simulation Exercise to help teams understand their current response and a Structured Response to Deterioration Mapping Tool to identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement.
- Maternity Early Warning Score (MEWS): Advocates a system to standardise the assessment and escalation of potential deterioration in pregnant and postnatal women. To support local implementation of the Maternity Early Warning Score (MEWS), SPSP Perinatal has produced resources available to download including lanyard / pocket cards, poster for local implementation and MEWS charts.
- Postpartum Haemorrhage PPH 4 stage approach: A multidisciplinary team approach to recognising, responding to and managing postpartum haemorrhage. Additional resources are available from the SPSP Perinatal Postpartum Haemorrhage (PPH) webinar which considered the current rates of PPH at a national level and heard from a range of disciplines on how we can improve outcomes for women.
- Improving Observation Practice Toolkit: This is aimed at all mental health practitioners and strongly recommends personalised care, treatment and safety plans are drawn up for every patient. This should be informed by their individual clinical needs, strengths and indicators of deterioration and harm.
- Paediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS) tools: These tools allow the paediatric community in Scotland to put into practice a national system-wide paediatric early warning system (PEWS). Information is available on developing PEWS as well as resources and tools such as PEWS charts, and accompanying teaching package to view and download.
- Preterm Perinatal Wellbeing Package (PPWP): Provides a number of interventions which have been clearly shown to improve short and long-term outcomes in babies born prematurely. As well as a significant reduction in mortality, these interventions reduce important morbidities such as intraventricular haemorrhage, preterm lung disease, sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis. Webinar resources include the Preterm Perinatal Wellbeing Package (PPWP) - successes, challenges and next steps, and the Perinatal Collaborative Webinar Series: Building Perinatal Teams.
- Perinatal Mortality Review Tool (PMRT): This webinar provided an opportunity to understand how to use the PMRT as a quality improvement aide, and consider where the PMRT sits in the Quality Improvement (QI) journey in relation to pregnancy outcomes.
Evidence, evaluation and reports
- Virtual Expert Reference Groups: This report highlights the work of the SPSP Acute Adult Team in using a virtual Expert Reference Group model to co-design and co-produce an improvement programme focused on safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Promoting the Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) via falls information resources: This report summarises research undertaken with patients and families to ascertain their understanding of SPSP messaging within falls resources.
Improvement examples and case studies
- Safety Culture Webinar Series: SPSP Perinatal and SPSP Paediatric Programmes have created a series of Safety Culture Webinars based on the Essentials of Safe Care (EoSC) driver diagram and the primary driver of ‘leadership to promote a culture of safety at all levels’. The webinar series focused on the importance of staff wellbeing in creating a better workforce culture, learning systems and their importance in a quality management system, and psychological safety with an opportunity to hear from experienced safety experts. Case studies were produced on staff wellbeing, learning systems, and psychological safety in addition.
- SPSP Perinatal Stillbirth Webinar Series: Improving Outcomes Through Assessment of Fetal Wellbeing: This webinar provided an opportunity to share individual experiences around assessment of fetal wellbeing and how a collaborative approach improves outcomes in the QI journey.
- Implementing a Continuous Intervention Policy in NHS Lothian: Case study detailing how NHS Lothian took the "From Observation to Intervention Guidance" from policy into practice.
- Improving Observation Practice Case Studies & Videos: Improving observation practice case studies from NHS Tayside and NHS Ayrshire & Arran.
- Understanding the Key Components of Effective Morning Hospital Huddles: This work aimed to understand the variation in hospital huddles across NHS Scotland. The approach was captured within a separate case study.
- The State Hospital: Using the Essentials of Safe Care to build an understanding of a system: Case study detailing how the State Hospital used the EoSC resource to have meaningful conversations to identify patient safety priorities.

We are continually working to develop and share new resources. Email us at his.pspcontact@nhs.scot if you have suggestions for new resources or feedback to help us improve our existing resources, or if you have resources or a local example of improvement activity you would like to share with others.

Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) resources

Upcoming SPSP Events

Events

Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Perinatal and SPSP Paediatric Programmes National Learning Session: Leadership to support a culture of safety

Past SPSP Events

Events

SPSP National Learning Event 2024: Creating the Conditions for Safe Care

Events

SPSP Essentials of Safe Care Webinar Series: Leading a culture of safety

Events

Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Acute Adult Collaborative Celebration Event 2024

Events

Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) Perinatal and Paediatric Programmes National Learning Session: A Collaborative Approach to Patient Safety

News

SPSP Perinatal and Scottish Perinatal Network webinar: The Perinatal Approach to Extreme Preterm Births

News

SPSP Paediatric Webinar: The Paediatric Early Warning Score (PEWS), and Data and Measurement for Quality Improvement

Events

SPSP Perinatal Learning Session

Events

Achieving Diagnostic Excellence in Primary Care

Events

SPSP Paediatric Learning Session

Events

SPSP National Learning Event 2023: Creating the Conditions for Safe Care

Events

SPSP Essentials of Safe Care Webinar Series: Is your team ready for safety?

Events

Acute Prescribing Quick Guide Webinar – HIS ihub, Primary Care Improvement Portfolio