As part of the Patient Safety Collaborative System Safety Workstream, we have developed a trio of blogs to coincide with the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) going live in most organisations this month. In this blog, Wendy Stobbs, Patient Safety Lead for the Patient Safety Collaborative at Health Innovation Manchester, talks about her reflections on the national System Safety Programmes co-lead role in PSIRF.

Since 1st April 2022, as part of my Patient Safety Lead role at Health Innovation Manchester in the Patient Safety Collaborative, I’ve been one of the national co-leads for the NHSE System Safety Improvement Programme (SSIP).  This role involves meeting and closely working with the national team around the development, management, and delivery of the current SSIP.  Currently this programme is heavily focused on the implementation of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) the replacement for the Serious Incident Framework (SIF) that all healthcare providers use to appreciate and learn from harm.  The SSIP has really felt like an exciting organic and emergent space, with PDSA’s in action as the focus and work has been progressed with national, regional, and local NHSE, and independent sector teams.  The monthly work stream leads meetings we as co-leads arrange and hold with all 15 Health Innovation Networks have very much followed an ‘all share, all learn’ approach as the asks of the 42 ICBs have been as varied as the geography they are in.

The willingness and interest of NHSE through Tracey Herlihey (Head of Policy and lead for implementing PSIRF) to gain our insight and thoughts on what approaches to take, reflections from our experiences, and willingness to co-develop implementation plans has personally made the co-lead role very rewarding.  This collaborative approach has also enabled us to shape and feed into the national and regional implementation groups how the ‘policy into action’ elements of PSIRF have, and are being, received by NHS providers.

With the focus for the 2024-25 commission now moving more towards embedding PSIRF within acute, independent Sector providers and piloting the approach within General Practice; we envisage a similar motivating journey over the coming year working closely with NHSE on this pivotal patient and safety culture space.