HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2019: Patient Safety Organisation of the Year

Northumbria has a reputation for innovative patient safety projects and for a culture where services are improved by learning from mistakes and raising concerns. Frontline staff generate safety and quality priorities, and are backed by a board which strives for continuous quality improvement and excellence but also sees the importance of staff motivation and empowerment in delivering this.

The trust has an impressive list of achievements including reducing falls by 25 per cent, improving anaemia detection and treatment before surgery, and reducing deaths through patient safety collaboratives around hip fractures. Many of these have financial benefits for the trust and the NHS as a whole, as well as improving care for patients.

It works with many other organisations to spread some of these initiatives and scale up work across the NHS. Its quality improvement delivery arm RUBIS Qi has worked with more than 40 teams across the NHS, it is working with the King’s Fund to deliver a leadership for improvement programme for 20 boards and is partnering with 10 others to spread its real time patient experience programme.

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