Work on implementing the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) is now well underway at The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital (RJAH).

Staff may be aware of the Serious Incident Framework, which was introduced by NHS England in 2015. This is now being replaced by the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF). This new framework represents a significant shift in the way the NHS responds to patient safety incidents and is a key part of the NHS patient safety strategy.

A multi-disciplinary team of key stakeholders, led by Kirsty Foskett, Head of Clinical Governance and Quality and one of the Trust’s patient safety specialists, are working on embedding PSIRF across the Trust.

Kirsty said: “One of the key steps for the PSIRF process has been holding a number of stakeholder group sessions, which have been made up of clinical and non-clinical staff.

“We’ve outlined a series of priorities for PSIRF which include infection prevention and control incidents, deteriorating patients, VTE incidents, falls and medication incidents.

“There has been great engagement with staff across the Trust to date for this piece of work – the engagement of our staff is so important to ensure that a human factors systems-based approach is utilised to explore patient safety incidents, and that this approach is engrained as part of our patient safety culture here at RJAH.”

To learn more about PSIRF, please visit the NHS England website.