Patient safety

Professor Berwick to head group preventing harm within NHS

A National Advisory Group has been formed to advise the NHS on how to prevent patients from harm.

Prime Minister David Cameron asked Professor Donald Berwick (pictured), president emeritus and senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and a former administrator of Medicare in the USA, to set up the group following Robert Francis QC’s final report into the breakdown of care at Mid Staffordshire hospitals.

Professor Berwick, one of the world’s leading experts on healthcare quality, will chair the group, which includes a range of experts on preventing patient harm in the NHS.

The group will report to NHS Commissioning Board and the Department of Health at July.

Professor Berwick said: “Assuring patient safety and high quality care is never automatic.  It requires the constant attention of leaders and continual support to the workforce. I have read, and been deeply affected by, the harrowing personal stories of individuals and families who were so badly injured when this commitment flagged at Mid-Staffordshire Hospitals.

“Our group will do whatever it can to recommend how the NHS in England take serious and profound action, learning from this tragedy to make patient care and treatment as safe as it can possibly be, and ever safer.  Indeed, there is no reason why English health care cannot aspire to be and become the safest health care in the world.

“Making patient care as safe as it can possibly be, at all times, is a major challenge in any health care system. It involves leadership, training, staff culture, organisational structures, systems and processes, data capture and analysis, regulation, deep patient and family involvement, and much more.

“It is important to remember that England is in many ways an international exemplar in patient safety, but Mid-Staffordshire shows us that there is still a great deal of work to do. The national group includes English experts as well as some from the US, and with such formidable knowledge and talent on board, I am confident we will be able to set out clear, practical advice and leave a legacy of safer care in the NHS.”

(Image: AP Photo/J. David Ake)

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