Points to note when using the framework
It’s important to start to ask ourselves:

• “Is care safe today?” This could be the result of an incident, near miss or “gut feeling” or instinct about patient care.  In the case of medicines the question may be “Is prescribing safe today?” This is about adopting a risk assessment approach to making care safer for patients today and in the future. It’s important to start to ask ourselves: In the example below it would have easier to focus only on the mycophenolate incident and the future learning from this, however by addressing the question about whether prescribing was safe today, it allowed this to be expanded to other shared care / near patient testing (NPT) medicines and for immediate actions to be identified and implemented to make prescribing safer.
  
• “What immediate actions need to be undertaken today, to make care (and/or prescribing) safer?”
• “What’s the learning and how can we share this?”
  

First published on July 5, 2017 via Linkedin



















Over the last two years, four Regional Improvement Bodies (RIBs) have been supported by the Health Foundation to test the Measurement and Monitoring of Safety Framework(Vincent et al, 2013). Testing has taken place across the UK, in Scotland, Yorkshire, Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside, with the current second phase encompassing ever more varied care settings (Care homes, primary care, whole health economy.) As well as this we are trialling the framework in professional training.