NHS has not embraced patient safety culture
The NHS has not yet embraced the culture of patient safety, Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England, says in his annual
report on the state of public health, published by the Department of Health this week.
The report assessed compliance in four recent examples of patient safety
alerts. It found that compliance was slow and deadlines were not met
and that some NHS trusts who reported compliance were found, on independent
inspection, not to be compliant.
One of the examples studied used the new electronic Safety Alert Broadcast
System. Professor Donaldson comments: “It is early days for this
modernised system, but the evidence of slow and variable compliance is
as apparent here as in the other three case
studies.”
The report also discusses progress in dealing with poor medical performance.
Professor Donaldson says that, although much has improved in this area, “more
could still be done to identify and help doctors who are ill,
including those with drug or alcholol
problems”.
He also looked at the major issues still outstanding from his previous
annual reports and says that, even though action plans are now in place,
long-standing health inequalities persist. He adds: “It is also
disappointing that NHS premises and goverment buildings are not all yet
smoke free, and I hope that there will be significant progress in these
two areas over the course of the next year in order to meet the committment
… to have these areas smoke free by 2006.” |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader