Patients Safety Alerts
What are Patients Safety Alerts?
According to NHS, Patients Safety Alerts -PSAs- are designed to rapidly warn the healthcare system of risks. These alerts require action to be taken by healthcare providers to reduce the risk of harm or death
Objective:
Increase patient safety by Providing all healthcare providers with guidance to prevent potential incidents that may lead to harm or death.
How it’s done?
New or under-recognized patient safety issues that can cause death or harm are identified through clinical review of sentinel events, medication errors reported through SPSC portal or any other channel. When we identify these issues, it will go through several steps to be published as national safety alerts, see below diagram:
Criteria for Selection:
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Only issued for safety-critical issues (risk of death, permanent harm, or severe and temporary harm)
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Have a concise and clear explanation of the risk
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The required actions are assessed for feasibility, risk of unintended consequences, equalities impact, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness
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The actions are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely)
Deciding if the patient safety issue meet our criteria:
