Management/board members

Management and Board members of NHS organisations play a key role in ensuring the care given to patients is safe and that risks are reduced.

Making services safe for patients is essential in the provision of high-quality health services. Key to providing high-quality care is having good systems in place for staff to report when patients have, or could have, been harmed.

Trusts that report high levels of patient safety incidents suggest a stronger organisational culture of safety because they take all incidents seriously and link reporting with learning.

High-reporting organisations demonstrate strong and visible safety leadership from their Boards and senior managers. This means investing in robust systems and using incident data to support decision making at the highest level.

The National Reporting and Learning Service (NRLS) has produced guidance to help management and Board members lead the safety culture in their organisation:

• Board members can lead improvements in patient safety by using these key actions around the use the Organisation Patient Safety Incident Reports.

• Board members can identify gaps in their safety culture, and work to improve it, by answering seven key questions fact sheet, jointly issued by the NRLS, NHS Confederation and Appointments Commission.

• Five actions to improve patient safety reporting are set out in Act on reporting, a joint NHS Confederation and NRLS fact sheet

• The Seven steps to patient safety explains how building a safety culture depends on strong leadership and an organisation’s ability to listen to and support all members of the healthcare team.

Resources for management and board members are listed below.