Improving safety in primary care

We all want to provide safe, high quality care - but how to do it without always having to work harder?  We provide training and coaching for GP teams and commissioners to help you better understand, measure and improve care.

Click here to view a short film about our work.

NEWS Survey results: Patient safety in general practice. A recent survey by the NHS Institute's Safer Care team highlights opportunities for general practices to engage their staff and build their skills to improve patient safety.  Download the survey report  'Quality Improvement in General Practice' published by The King's Fund.  Members of our Primary Care Teaching Faculty, Drs Paresh Dawda, Richard Jenkins and Robert Varnam, have contributed a report to the GP Quality Inquiry.  Download a copy of 'Quality Improvement in General Practice' New podcasts launched - Improving Quality and Safety. Sign up to receive our new monthly podcasts for GPs and practice managers.

1. Get the full picture - 360 Degree Patient Safety Appraisal

Our model for 360 Degree Patient Safety Appraisal is a great starting point to build enthusiasm in your team and get a more complete picture of the issues which are impacting the safety and quality of care.  All of our patient safety training includes a focus on this framework for getting the right information about patient safety, and engaging all staff in detecting areas in need of improvement.

•  download brief introduction

Practices who use the 360 Degree model find that it is easier to enthuse and engage staff and that reporting of safety problems improves. More importantly, a much broader range of safety problems are detected - and they are ones which are easier to improve.

 

2. Detect and measure harm - Primary Care Trigger Tool

The Primary Care Trigger Tool measures patient harm caused by healthcare.  It is a means to calculate an adverse event rate and identify areas of care where most harms are occurring.  It provides practices with an unbiased measure of the incidence of iatrogenic harm experienced by their patients.  It informs priorities for action and tracks improvements over time.  

• introduction
• introduction to the Trigger Tool Portal
• login directly to the Trigger Tool Portal
• join one of our free Quick Start webinars
• sign up for an Action Learning Set in assessing or improving patient safety

3. Training to improve safety - Leading Improvement in Patient Safety

The Leading Improvement in Safety and Quality programme gives GP practices the skills and confidence to achieve sustained reductions in patient harm.  A series of safety improvement modules builds expertise in understanding the causes of harm, identifying gaps in the processes which lead to most adverse events, and designing more reliable care for patients.  The course is combines training, practical workshops, your own project work and regular action learning sets.  

• more information about the programme

Read our recent article about patient safety improvement.