Safety & Quality

Our Commitment to Our Patients, Visitors and Staff

A focus on safety, a commitment to quality and pursuit of excellence are vital in all aspects of what we do if we are to build on our recent successes. In order to succeed we aim to deliver a quality of care that we would wish for ourselves and those dearest to us.

Patient Safety Hotline: 01905 733444

Patient Safety is our top priority

The very least that we should be able to promise our patients is that they will not come to any harm while they are in our care.

The Trust Board has unanimously endorsed the principle that 'patient safety is our top priority.' As an organisation we are wholeheartedly committed to the national Patient Safety First Campaign.

A key part of this is learning through our mistakes. Our staff are encouraged to report incidents or 'near misses' without fear of recriminations and with confidence that their concerns will be taken seriously and acted on where necessary.

But we are increasingly taking a more active approach to patient safety - by looking at everything we do and asking ourselves "is this the kind of care we would want for ourselves or those dearest to us?" If the answer is not a very definite yes, then we will change what we do for the better.

How You Can Help

Patients and visitors can help us to create an environment where everyone is working together to deliver the safest possible care.

Support from the public for our infection prevention and control measures (including scrupulous hand hygiene and visiting restrictions where needed) has helped us to make real progress in driving down rates of MRSA, CDiff and other so-called 'superbugs.'

Now, we hope you will help to act as our 'eyes and ears' and let us know if you see anything happening in any of our hospitals which you think may be putting patient safety at risk.

We have launched a dedicated email address and telephone line for anyone wanting to let us know how we can further improve safety standards across the Alexandra, Kidderminster and Worcestershire Royal Hospitals.

If you have anything you want to tell us, please get in touch. You can email or ring anonymously if you wish, although it would be helpful if you gave your contact details in case we need more information:

You can email patient.safety@worcsacute.nhs.uk

or ring our Patient Safety Hotline on 01905 733444.

What We Are Doing

Our Trust was recently accepted on the national 'Leading Improvement in Patient Safety (LIPS) initiative, run by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement.

The aim of the LIPS programme is to make sure Trust leadership teams have the knowledge and systems in place to keep patient safety as a priority throughout their organisation.

As well as the Trust Board, a number of senior clinicians are closely involved in this work, led by Dr Steve Graystone in his role as Medical Director for Patient Safety.

You can see more about the LIPS initiative on the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement website.

We are also continuing on a number of projects as part of the Patient Safety First Campaign.

The Patient Safety First Campaign has been created to change the culture within the NHS - with the safety of patients the highest priority and all avoidable death and harm unacceptable.

We have a programme of 'Patient Safety Walkabouts' when Executive and Non-executive board members visit clinical areas to hear first hand from patients and staff about how safety standards might be improved. These visits are structured and planned so that an action plan can be agreed on the day to tackle any issues highlighted.

We are also particularly focussing on patients who are at greatest risk of suffering a rapid deterioration of their condition while in hospital. We use a system known as PARS (Patient at Risk Score) to make sure that patients are closely observed and any deterioration in their condition is addressed immediately.