15.08.14
HEE launches new board on safety
Health Education England (HEE) has developed a new Safety Board aimed at ensuring the principles of patient safety are embedded across all areas of healthcare education and training system.
This announcement follows the launch of the Sign up to Safety campaign last month by the Department of Health, which aims to halve avoidable harm and save up to 6,000 lives over the next three years.
Professor Norman Williams, a past president of the Royal College of Surgeons, has been asked to chair the new board with Sir Keith Pearson, chair of HEE, acting as vice chair.
The HEE Safety Board will start its work later this year seeking views from students, universities, providers of NHS services and patients themselves to address how patient safety is currently taught and how it could be improved. It will look to report back in the autumn of 2015.
Prof Williams said: “From my first days as a student training to be a doctor I knew that First, Do No Harm was the code of doctors and healthcare professionals.
“But after failings at Mid Staffordshire Trust and other hospitals as well as the myriad of every day mistakes that impact on patients across our NHS we need to revisit how we ensure education and training makes patient safety the bedrock of our education and training system and how our universities and providers of NHS services train and educate for safety.”
It is expected that Prof Williams and Sir Keith will be seeking other members to join them on the Board over future weeks and will then set out a work programme and invite evidence.
HEE added that it is likely the Board will conduct a number of themed evidence sessions around such areas as human factors; multi-disciplinary education for safety; the curricula; and how staff measure and value patient safety knowledge and competence.
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