SIGN UP TO SAFETY
Sign up to Safety aims to deliver harm free care for every patient, every time, everywhere. It champions openness and honesty and supports everyone to improve safety for patients.
Vine Surgery Partnership through the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) framework wishes to engage with the Somerset CCG Sign up to Safety programme and its ethos. The following action plan has been drawn up to support the CCG objectives of:
1) Increasing incident reporting and learning from incident in primary care both clinical, including medication incidents and non-clinical; and
2) Support learning from service user feedback including Friends and Family Test
The Five Sign Up to Safety Pledges
1) Put safety first. Commit to reduce avoidable harm in the NHS by half and make public the goals and plans developed locally.
Practice’s response:
We will share our pledges with our local Federation colleagues, our staff, our patient groups and our patients.
We will work with our practice team and colleagues to promote the safety agenda and ensure that it is intrinsic to our daily operational processes and that everyone is committed to quality improvement within the surgery.
We will undertake a review of the practices current reporting processes to establish clear procedures for reporting, recording and following up safety incidents to promote increased incident reporting and shared learning from such events.
We will encourage service user feedback via the Family & Friends tool, website comments form and ‘we welcome your feedback’ forms and will review, act and respond to in a timely manner to comments received.
Progress made:
Pledges have been discussed at partner and staff meetings.
Pledges were discussed with the active Patient Participation Group members and also emailed to the online group members.
Friends and family data is collected each month and published to our website.
“We welcome your feedback” forms are reviewed each month and where appropriate, discussed with partners and staff. Responses are always given to patients who request them
2) Continually learn. Make their organisations more resilient to risks, by acting on the feedback from patients and by constantly measuring and monitoring how safe their services are.
Practice’s response:
Sign up to Safety will become a standard Agenda item for our weekly operational and monthly staff meetings and any practice Significant Events, near misses or complaints can be discussed without delay.
We will report incidents in line with our agreed practice procedure and will conduct a bi-annual review of complaints and SEAs to ensure that any identified learning or safety issues have been addressed.
We will share our knowledge with Somerset CCG and if appropriate NHS England National Reporting and Learning System.
We will raise awareness and increase the use of the Datix system to feedback any service issues to Somerset CCG. WMF practices will work together and develop and implement a Datix protocol and audit our practice uptake and share with WMF practices.
Progress made:
We have held significant event and complaints meetings and these have been minuted. Any learning from these meetings have been shared with all partners and staff during our regular meetings.
The Datix system has been promoted in partner meetings.
3) 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.
Practice’s response:
Vine Surgery Partnership’s priority is to learn from significant events, complaints and near misses.
The practice will uphold a “no blame” policy and encourage all staff to report issues, which can be discussed openly and learning points shared. If a mistake is made we will explain what went wrong and what actions we have taken – staff are encouraged to apologise when mistakes have been made.
When a mistake is made, we will explain what went wrong and what actions we have taken. All staff are encouraged and supported to apologise when mistakes have been made. The practice endeavours to investigate incidents openly and report accurately, honestly and in a timely way.
Progress made:
Any compliments, comments or complaints are raised at monthly staff training sessions. We encourage open discussion and feedback of any points raised.
We are using an online e-learning package which promotes being open, conflict resolution and handling complaints.
4) Collaborate. Take a leading role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that improvements are made across all of the local services that patients use.
Practice’s response:
We will work together with the practices in West Mendip Federation (Glastonbury Surgery, Glastonbury Health Centre, Wells Health Centre and Wells City Practice) to agree our shared sign up to the 5 safety pledges and produce a shared statement of intent and a shared Safety Improvement plan framework.
We will explore the offer from Somerset CCG to deliver Federation wide training support from their Quality team to ensure consistent learning and standards between practices with regards to Safety. All 6 practices share an e-learning package to help standardise training.
Progress made:
We are still awaiting the CCG training but hope this will be available in the New Year.
The Your Health and Wellbeing collaborative group is active and meeting on a regular basis.
All Mendip practices are now meeting each quarter as Mendip Commissioning Locality.
5) Support. Help people understand why things go wrong and how to put them right. Give staff the time and support to improve and celebrate the progress.
Practice’s response:
The practice promotes a “no blame” culture throughout the organisation and encourages open discussion with staff and patients. There are clear processes for reporting incidents and we will ensure that all staff and patients know how to raise safety concerns.
Staff and patients are encouraged to submit ideas on how services can be improved and ideas taken forward will be shared with staff, patients and with WMF practices to see if ‘group learning’ could benefit.
Where training is identified WMF will endeavour to hold collaborative training sessions, or cascade information to the other practices and would welcome Somerset CCG training support.
Progress made:
At our monthly staff training sessions all members of staff are encouraged to submit ideas on how services can be improved.
We have “we welcome your feedback” forms on our Reception counter and our website also includes an online version of this form. Comments submitted, unless anonymized, are always acknowledged and a response, where appropriate, sent to the patient.
Our e-learning package covers modules on being open, conflict resolution and handling complaints. All staff, clinical and admin, cover these modules in their annual training plan.
Safety Improvement Plan
Action plan to support delivery of the 5 practice pledges