Patient safety and human factors: Northern Ireland

The overarching quality strategy in Northern Ireland defines quality under the headings: safety; effectiveness; patient and client focus (Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety 2011). These are essential elements within the Transforming Your Care (TYC) consultation which sets out the new strategic direction of health and social care in Northern Ireland designed to ensure safe, high quality and sustainable services for patients, service users and staff (Health and Social Care Board 2012).

The key policy statement Safety first draws together key themes to promote user safety across health and social care. It provides a framework for sustainable improvement and an action plan organised under five themes (Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety 2006).
 
In Northern Ireland the HSC Safety Forum, which is within the Public Health Agency, is taking a lead in promoting shared learning and leadership in patient safety activities. The Forum works through collaboratives, "a short term learning system, run over 12-18 months that brings together a number of provider multidisciplinary teams to seek improvement in a focused topic area".

More information about policy, programmes and guidance is available at UK resources. You can find out about:

For further information relating to quality improvement and other clinical governance issues in Northern Ireland visit the Clinical Governance resource.

For fortnightly updates on patient safety and other themes you can register for the Quality and safety e-Bulletin.

References

These were last accessed on 19 November 2012. Some of them are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files.

Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (2006) Safety first: a framework for sustainable improvement in the HPSS, Belfast: DHSSPS. 

Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (2011) Quality 2020: a 10-year strategy to protect and improve quality in health and social care, Belfast: DHSSPS. 

Health and Social Care Board, Northern Ireland (2012) Transforming Your Care: vision to action. TYC consultation website.