The Trust takes patient safety very seriously and the Trust Board issued the following statement in June 2010:

Patient safety statement

“The Board declares that its top priority is the delivery of high quality care to all patients, by ensuring that patient safety is at the heart of everything we do.

'While it is still important to meet national targets and to remain in financial balance, this must not be achieved at the expense of the safety of our patients. We encourage staff to raise issues with their manager or Director if they feel that the safety of patients is being compromised.

'It should be emphasised that when things do go wrong, this is generally due to problems with systems of working or through a series of accumulated small errors, rather than the fault of one individual. We ask all staff to complete Incident Forms so that we can investigate the circumstances, learn lessons and change practice, when relevant.

'We provide safe, high quality care to many thousands of people every year, but sometimes, despite our best efforts, things can and do go wrong. If a patient is harmed as a result of a mistake or error in their care, we believe that they, their family or those who care for them should receive an apology, be kept fully informed as to what has happened, have their questions answered and know what is being done in response. This is something that we call being open.

'By being open, learning from our mistakes and changing practice this contributes to the high quality of care we aspire to.'

The Trust is one of over 150 Trusts that signed up to the national Patient Safety First campaign which was launched to improve patient safety at hospitals across England.

The key commitments we have chosen are:

• Leadership Safety Walkrounds to ensure Directors are aware of staff views and any concerns on patient safety
• Undertaking Global Trigger Tool Case Note Reviews, an internationally recognised system where organisations use a set of criteria which may have triggered or led to an adverse event for a patient. It highlights from a random set of notes issues which may need further investigation and lets the Trust benchmark ourselves against others
• Improving care to the Deteriorating Patient by, in part, preventing the number of cardiac arrests that occur in the hospital
• Improving various aspects of Medical Records to ensure they are available, complete and legible
• Reducing harm from high risk medications
• Improving aspects of Critical Care in preventing and reducing hospital acquired infections

All of the above aims have resulted in a number of initiatives, such as introducing a new ‘trigger' system which helps nurses to easily identify patients who need a visit from the newly-formed Medical Emergency Team to help stop their condition deteriorating unnecessarily.

This work has been recognised both internally and externally by a number of awards:

• Winner of the Critical and Intensive Care award at the National Patient Safety Awards 2010
• Winner of the Team Award for the Outreach Team at the Trust's Committed to Excellence 2009 staff awards
• Runner up in the Patient Safety Award at the West Midlands Health and Social Care Awards 2009.

Overall, in terms of patient safety, the Trust is successfully implementing a variety of projects to both reduce incidents occurring and, when accidents do happen, investigating these thoroughly to ensure lessons are learned and systems changed to prevent any re-occurrence.