Patient safety and human factors: 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. Some of the resources are in PDF format - see how to access PDF files.

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 The campaign is no longer active, the website remains in place but only for archive purposes.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.

Harm Free Care
Harm Free Care developed from the Department of Health's Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention Programme (QIPP) Safe Care work stream and its pilot programme Safety Express. 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). The website provides a range of tools and guidance to assist frontline health care staff to achieve harm free care.

The focus is on measuring harm from the patient's perspective. This means counting patients 'protected from harm' and determining how many patient have none of the harms identified above and thus are harm free from these conditions. The NHS Safety Thermometer has been developed as a point of care survey instrument which teams can use to measure harm and the proportion of patients that are 'harm free' during the working day, for example at shift handover or during ward rounds thereby providing a 'temperature check' on harm. It is intended that this be used alongside other measures of harm at a local level.

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 and 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 and 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 programmes and activities. A review of the campaign is available see: Patient Safety First 2008 to 2010: the campaign review (PDF 1.2MB).

Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP)
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. The programme has reached the end of its first phase and an announcement has been made by the Scottish Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon, that the programme will be extended until 2015. This is reported in the Scottish Government website, see: Patient safety programme extended.

Scottish Patient Safety Paediatric Programme (SPSPP)
This is the "community shared space" supporting the Scottish Patient Safety Paediatric Programme. It includes details of the SPSPP team, the workstreams, resources and activities. 

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.