Improvement Cymru announce the Safe Care Collaborative safety priorities across Wales

Improvement Cymru are pleased to announce the shared safety priorities identified across Wales for the Safe Care Collaborative.

The Safe Care Collaborative is part of the Safe Care Partnership, which is between NHS Wales health boards and trusts, Improvement Cymru and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). 

The collaborative provides the opportunity for organisations to learn from each other and from experts in the areas where they want to make improvements.

Following extensive exploration work in partnership with health boards and trusts this year, chief executives from health boards and trusts across Wales have all supported the inclusion of the following work streams as part of the Safe Care Collaborative:

1. Leadership for patient safety improvement - Working together to support the development of the culture and learning system within each health system and across NHS Wales and ensuring that the whole system is working towards common and well aligned goals.
2. Safe and effective community care - Keeping people safe in community settings through prevention of deterioration and appropriate response to acute health care needs is achieved.
3. Safe and effective ambulatory care - Keeping people safe in the ambulatory care environment, preventing hospital admissions and treating acute care needs in the most appropriate settings.
4. Safe and effective acute care - Keeping people safe in hospital, ensuring that structures and processes are robust in response to acute deterioration or concern.

The collaborative focuses on deterioration across the whole pathway from primary to secondary to community care and address deterioration in all populations (children, adults and older people). It uses the Framework for Safe, Reliable and Effective Care to enable organisations to make improvements in the key causes of deterioration including sepsis, infections such as UTI or chest infection, chronic disease, co-morbidities, palliative / end of life, failure to manage complications and unavoidable complications.

Working on the four work streams simultaneously will support system wide learning and impact on safe, reliable and effective care throughout the patient journey.

Professor John Boulton, Director of Improvement Cymru, said, “We are excited about this opportunity to accelerate learning through the shared experiences of the health boards and trusts in Wales along with international expertise from IHI.  The Safe Care Collaborative brings together teams, coaches, executives and senior leaders for safety from across the health boards and trusts in Wales to focus on a common aim. It builds on existing work and will help strengthen improvement capability locally and nationally. Thank you to everyone from across Wales who has contributed so far and we look forward to continuing to work with you as part of the Safe Care Collaborative.”

Capability building is already underway to support the Safe Care Collaborative through the Leading for Patient Safety and Coaching for Patient Safety. The first collaborative learning session will take place on 29-30 November 2022 and teams are being recruited through their local executive leads for quality and safety.