Patient Safety

Wessex PSC comprises all the NHS providers and commissioners across the region, including hospitals, mental health and community organisations, the ambulance service, primary care, and Integrated Care Systems. We bring together patients and healthcare staff to bring about system-wide improvements to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people in the care of our health services.

We’ve continued to deliver on our three key objectives this year: to develop quality improvement capability, to encourage patient, family, and carer involvement in improvement, and to facilitate the development of a positive safety culture. 

What was delivered in 2021-22? 

• Worked with system partners to achieve the objectives and deliverables of our commission, with key enablers including addressing inequalities, patient and carer co-design, safety culture, improvement leadership, building capacity and capability, and measurement for improvement.

Deterioration

• Won HSJ Award (as part of AHSN Network) in November 2021 for supporting the implementation of Covid Oximetry @home and virtual wards.

• RESTORE2mini versions adapted through co-production for learning disability, domiciliary and prison healthcare settings.

• RESTORE2mini Learning Disability project shortlisted twice for the 2021 HSJ Patient Safety Awards.

• RESTORE2 and pulse oximetry videos viewed over 1 million times.

• Collaborated with PSCs and Operational Delivery Networks across the South East, supporting four trusts to test the national Paediatric Early Warning Scores (PEWS).

• Produced a suite of case studies to demonstrate our work.

Maternity and neonatal

• Facilitated regional and local network events and sessions to support teams working on smoke-free pregnancy and optimisation of the pre-term infant, and to prepare for the national maternity and newborn early warning scores.

• Maternity and neonatal units sustained an 84% rate of administration of magnesium sulphate to clinically eligible women in pre-term labour, to reduce the incidence of cerebral palsy in newborns.

Medicines safety

• Developed NHS Business Services Authority prescribing comparators/ dashboard to support opioid reduction programme.

Adoption and spread

• Supported organisations to deliver COPD and asthma discharge bundles, with Wessex achieving above the national average in all elements.

• Five trusts achieving at least 90% in two or more elements of the asthma discharge care bundle.

Mental health

• Engaged 19 wards to test change ideas to improve care in inpatient mental health and learning disability acute settings. Read how we helped Isle of Wight NHS Trust.