Recent attempts to reduce avoidable harms in hospitals include Patient Safety Huddles (PSHs): brief, daily, multidisciplinary meetings that allow teams to convene, review and ensure safe care. Between October 2017 and September 2018, for example, English NHS organisations reported 1,991,797 incidents as occurring. About 8% of patients in the National Health System (NHS) have experienced an adverse event.

Future work should examine inter-disciplinary and role-based differences in TSC outcomes.Īvoidable patient safety harm remains a problem within healthcare in the United Kingdom (UK). PSH fidelity criteria may need adjusting to include factors deemed most useful by frontline staff. PSHs are feasible and effective for improving teamwork and safety culture, especially for nurses. Analysis showed a positive change for the majority (26/27) of TSC questions and the overall safety grade of the ward. PSHs frequently demonstrated a ‘fear free’ space while Statistical Process Control charts and historical harms were routinely omitted. Observations confirmed PSHs were embedded in 64 wards. Changes in TSC scores were calculated for Trusts, job role and clinical speciality. A Teamwork and Safety Climate survey (TSC) was administered at two time-points: pre- and post-embedding. Observations were used to check embedded status and fidelity of PSH. The Stages of Implementation Checklist (SIC) was used to determine time taken to embed PSHs. MethodsĪ multi-method Developmental Evaluation was conducted. This paper aims to assess their fidelity, time to embed, and impact on teamwork and safety culture. The Huddle Up for Safer Healthcare (HUSH) project attempted to scale up the implementation of patient safety huddles (PSHs) in five hospitals – 92 wards - across three UK NHS Trusts. There is also variation in how huddles are conceived and implemented with insufficient focus on their fidelity (the extent to which delivered as planned) and potential ways in which they might influence outcomes. Despite growing interest and application of huddles as a mechanism for improving safety, evidence of their impact remains limited. The Patient Safety Huddle (PSH) is a brief multidisciplinary daily meeting held to discuss threats to patient safety and actions to mitigate risk.

Space 1999 complete series