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NHS Patient Safety Strategy

In 2019 the NHS Patient Safety Strategy was launched by NHS England and NHS Improvement. This explains how the NHS will carry on improving and making things safer for patients over the next 5 to 10 years, building on the foundations of a patient safety culture and a patient sfaety system. You can find out more here.

What are we doing in East Kent Hospitals to keep our patients safe?

We ensure that each of our clinical Care Groups has a plan in place to meet our high patient safety expectations in line with our patient safety strategy, the strategy focuses on a range of activities that will help us enable greater patient safety and address clinical priorities. 

EKHUFT Patient Safety Strategy 2019 - 2022

In line with the Trust's clinical priorities and quality strategy, we plan to achieve continuous evidence of working more safety and improving patient outcomes. We will:

Clinical Priorities:

  • Improve detection, management and escalation of deteriorating patients
  • Reduce medication errors
  • Reduce patient falls
  • Reduce hospital-acquired pressure ulcers

  Enabling Patient Safety

  • Encourage openness and embed learning from when things go wrong, and when things go right
  • Learn from patient deaths
  • Engage with leaders
  • Train staff in quality improvement methodologies
  • Strengthen systems and processes to improve safety
  • Support staff

  Our Commitments to You

  We pledge to:

  1. Put safety first - by committing to reduce avoidable harm.

  2. Continually learn - by making our Trust more resilient to risks, by acting on the feedback of patients and measuring how safe our services are.

  3. Be honest - by being 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.

  4. Collaborate - by taking a leading role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that improvements are made across all of the local services that patients use.

  5. Support and help people to understand why things go wrong and how to put them right. Give staff time and support to improve, and celebrate progress.