Clinical Excellence - Safe Care Programme
The Safe Care Programme is the patient safety component of the Clinical Excellence Programme. It is led by the leader, safe care programme and the Safe Care Committee.
All individual services have a responsibility for patient safety and wherever possible, responses to safety issue/improvement will be led by services through their Service Clinical Excellence groups. However, Starship Child Health directorate requires the ability to rapidly respond to safety risks and to ensure a broad based approach is taken to investigating and solving such risks.
There are three key principles within the Safe Care Programme:
A key aim of the safe care programme is the active development of a safety culture within Starship Child Health. Our culture of patient safety focuses on prevention. That’s why we see patient safety events as opportunities to learn.
We want to encourage and support each other to report events including “near misses” and “great catches” without fear of blame or punishment. Reporting patient safety events is through the Datix Patient Safety Management System.
When we talk about a patient safety concern, we mean anything that might impact the wellbeing of a patient. Patient safety concerns include but are not limited to:
Medications, clinical processes or organisational systems that could lead to patient harm
Faulty, unavailable or incorrect use of equipment or supplies
Hazards that could lead to patient harm
Security issues
Risk management is essential to achieving clinical excellence. It involves the proactive identification, assessment, and mitigation of potential risks that could harm mokopuna, arising from areas such as clinical procedures, environmental hazards, operational challenges, or non-compliance with standards. Effective risk management enhances the safety and well-being of mokopuna and whānau, while fostering continuous improvement in clinical practice. This approach not only protects mokopuna and whānau but also empowers kaimahi to deliver high-quality care in alignment with expected standards. Service and Directorate risks and hazards are systematically recorded in the appropriate tab within Datix.
Patient Safety Event Review
Sometimes, we need to review reported patient safety events to identify system failures and inform quality improvement initiatives. We can use a variety of methodologies (e.g. case review, learning review, adverse event review), depending on the circumstances, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the issues and develop targeted actions to enhance patient safety and improve overall healthcare quality.
See here for resources about event reviews.