Patient safety - campaigns, programmes and networks

This section describes campaigns, programmes and networks relevant to patient safety across the four UK countries.

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 Programmes and campaigns

This listing is arranged alphabetically.

1000 Lives Plus
1000 Lives Plus is a national improvement programme supporting individuals and organisations in improving patient safety and reducing avoidable harm across NHS Wales. It focusses on building capacity and sustaining and spreading improvements and involves every health board and trust in Wales as well as universities, charities, voluntary and other organisations. Activities encompass a number of different areas. For details see Programme areas.

1000 Lives Plus publications and resources
These include White Papers, improvement guides and tools and videos.

1000 Lives Plus Student Chapter
This section is aimed at all healthcare practitioner students.

Clean your hands campaign
The cleanyourhands campaign worked to improve the hand hygiene of healthcare staff at the point of patient / service-user care. It was developed by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) to help the NHS in England and Wales to reduce healthcare associated infection. The campaign is no longer active, the website remains in place but only for archive purposes.

Germs. Wash your hands of them. Scotland's National Hand Hygiene Campaign
This Campaign delivered by Health Protection Scotland was launched in January 2007 and ran until March 2011 working towards achieving a zero tolerance to non-compliance with hand hygiene.  The resources produced to support the campaign will continue to be available and will be subject to annual review. From April 2011 the work of the campaign has been transferred from a dedicated project team into the Health Protection Scotland Infection Control Team.  
Reports of the compliance with hand hygiene audits are available on the Health Protection website at National Hand Hygiene Campaign.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland (2010) Patient Safety in Primary Care
Health Improvement Scotland is leading along with key partners to develop and implement the Scottish Patient Safety Programme in Primary Care. The focus of the programme is on four main themes: high risk medications and medicines reconciliation in the community; improving communication between secondary and primary care; align with the work of the Long Term Conditions Collaborative; Healthcare Acquired Infection in the community.

Health Foundation
The  work of the Health Foundation has included a number of programmes of work relevant to patient safety. Some of these are now completed but have been influential on other patient safety activities. See Safer Patients Initiative.
Information about other programmes can be found at Inspiring improvement in patient safety  and the patient safety topic area. Programmes include: 

NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement: Safer care – Improving patient safety
The Safer Care initiative developed by the NHS Institute in England aims “to build an NHS where every member of staff has the passion, confidence and skills to eliminate harm to patients”. It includes programmes for building capacity and capability to improve patient safety in acute and primary care with programmes for specific care sectors.

Patient Safety First
From 2008 to March 2010 Safety First was a campaign for the NHS in England to engage leaders and frontline staff and enable changes locally. It focussed on the implementation of five interventions - Leadership for safety;reducing harm from deterioration; reducing harm in critical care; reducing harm in perioperative care; reducing harm from high-risk medicines. Although the campaign phase came to an end in March 2010, patient Safety First has become a ‘hub’ for a number of patient safety improvement programmes and resources including ‘Safety Express’.

A review of the campaign is available see Patient Safety First 2008 to 2010: the campaign review (PDF 1.17MB). 

Safety Express
Safety Express is the name of the Department of Health’s Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention Programme (QIPP) Safe Care work stream, so named because “ we aim to move together at a pace and scale which is previously unprecedented in English healthcare”.  It  is a partnership with existing programmes (in particular Energising for Excellence, High Impact Actions, Patient Safety First, the Productive Series and the National VTE Implementation group) and each SHA region. It focuses on the delivery of harm free care with the particular aim of reducing harm from pressure ulcers, falls, catheter acquired urinary tract infections and blood clots (venous thromboembolism or VTE).
“NHS staff will celebrate the patients who travel through their systems ‘harm free’”. The Safety Express Team launched a dedicated website harmfreecare in October 2012 which includes a range of tools and resources for assisting frontline healthcare staff to achieve harm free care.

Scottish Patient Safety Programme
The Programme is co-ordinated by Healthcare Improvement Scotland. It aims to improve the safety of hospital care across the country and is being implemented in every acute hospital in Scotland. For details of the interventions the Programme is focussing on over a five year period see Aims of the Programme.   

Welsh Healthcare Associated Infection Programme
The Welsh Healthcare Associated Infection programme (WHAIP) which is part of Public Health Wales, is a team whose responsibility lies within the area of infections that are acquired as a result of contact with health care services providing a framework for the control, prevention and management of infectious disease in Wales.

Networks

Clinical human factors group (chfg)
Chfg is “an independent campaign group which aims to stimulate dialogue and demonstrate through concrete action how a better understanding of the role of human factors can have a significant impact on safety, quality and productivity in healthcare”. The group has issued  a manifesto and the website includes news,  resources , information about human factors theory, stories and experiences from practitioners that demonstrate the importance  of human factors in health care.

NES Patient Safety Multidisciplinary Group
The group involves a range of NHS Education for Scotland staff  working together to develop a more coordinated approach to patient safety. This website supports the group by providing a forum for communication, collaboration and sharing of resources.

RCN Infection Prevention and Control Network
This UK and international-wide network is for any member who has an interest in infection prevention regardless of practice setting or role. The network complements membership of RCN Forums and is committed to promoting excellence in nursing practice.

Scottish Infection Research Network
Funded by the Scottish Government and established to improve the quality and quantity of research into health care-related infections in Scotland.

Scottish Patient Safety Research Network
The network was established in 2007 to enhance capacity in patient safety research in Scotland. It involves multidisciplinary research teams from three universities (Aberdeen University, Dundee University and St Andrews University) studying adverse events in the Scottish healthcare system and examining organisational and professional methods of improving safety for patients.